STORM Skills Training CIC

STORM®’s aim through training and education is to:

• Challenge the ‘fear’ of suicide, and to encourage open and clear communication between services enabling people who are in psychological pain to access the help and support they need.

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

STORM® offers high quality suicide prevention and self-injury mitigation training packages on a not-for-profit basis for use in the health care, social care, criminal justice and education services. Frontline staff from a range of Adult and Children’s services, schools and prisons have benefited from the training.

We have over 600 facilitators training frontline staff to give them the skills needed to work safely and effectively with individuals who are thinking about suicide or may be self-harming.

Our training:

• Allows people to practice the skills they have learnt, building confidence to ask the difficult questions in the right way.

• Creates brilliant networking opportunities and is adaptable to any place of work for both adults and children.

• Uses interactive methods that are known to develop skills such as role-rehearsal, filmed role-rehearsal and discussions.

What are your current priorities?

Challenge perceptions

STORM®’s mission is to challenge the ‘fear’ of suicide, and to encourage open and clear communication between services enabling people who are in psychological pain to access the help and support they need. We will achieve this by providing the recipients of STORM® training with the skills and knowledge to challenge their ‘fear’ directly. We will encourage them to:

• Face the fear of asking about suicide and self-harm.

• Engage with the person in distress with compassion.

• Acknowledge and validate the pain the person is feeling.

• Respond appropriately, enabling the person to access the support they need.

#HeyareyouOK? Campaign

The aim of the #HeyareyouOK? Campaign is to:

Promote a culture that teaches us to recognise distress and to talk about it openly and honestly; a culture that teaches us to ask for help without fear of being stigmatised; and a culture that teaches us that sometimes we need to reach out to those we think may be finding life difficult to cope with.

Reaching out and engaging with the community

Organise seminars and networks to bring communities and health, education and social services plus the Third Sector together. Using social networks to engage with the wider communities.

Delivering quality ethically

Continue to deliver a gold standard of training in Suicide, Self Injury and Postvention. Pay close attention to the voices and views of all stakeholders.

Leading change

Continually develop our interactive training packages make sure that we use innovative methods to deliver training. Ensure that our training methods are rigorously evaluated and remain at the forefront of best practice.

Compassion

Emphasize the importance of compassion in all service providers. In particular, to emphasize this theme in our free CPD  events for professionals.

What challenges are you currently facing?

• Financial pressures on service providers

• Stigma surrounding suicide and self-harm