Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service

How does your organisation contribute to preventing suicide and supporting those affected by it?

This is a new journey for us; having experienced a ‘suicide cluster’ in the final six months of last year, we are focused on being a national leader in our wellbeing and suicide prevention work.

What are your current priorities?

Workforce engagement: creating a culture in which suicide prevention and wellbeing can be openly discussed and support found and provided as needed.

Postvention support: ensuring those impacted by suicide are supported

Understanding and identifying risk: harnessing our understanding of prevention, with data and feedback structures to target and offer support as appropriate.

What challenges are you currently facing?

Culture change: challenging ‘traditional’ views and encouraging staff to talk about their problems and/or seek mental health support if they need it

Complex processes and communications creating barriers to accessing support

Organisational structure: Our fire and rescue staff are typically a harder to reach workforce, dur to primarily working on an on-call basis with secondary employment.