The Life Matters, Children’s Self – Harm and Suicide Prevention

The Life Matters charity was set up to help children and young adults who find themselves struggling to cope with everyday life, self-harming or even suicide ideation or attempts. We found that there is a vital need for more services to provide targeted care and support to schools and other organisations who have vulnerable children in their care who need special attention, care and support.  

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

We pride ourselves in knowing we are the only organisation in the UK to offer a CPD accredited course for children where the child will receive a certificate on completion of the programme. They will also have their programme as a completed tool to help them face other challenges and to help them develop the next chapters in their life.

We are currently launching a new programme, ‘The Child’s Voice’, the project is designed by children for children.

We are the only organisation in the UK to offer a programme that connects clinical research with social work practices. This is a unique wellbeing programme for children and young people, covering all aspects of mental health including children’s suicide prevention safety planning and support for self-harming. It is a 10-week intensive programme set up for children and can be worked on semi-independently or independently by age 11 but needs the support of a wellbeing office from The Life Matters to oversee the programme.

The programme has been designed so that parents, carers, schools and all other professionals working with children can identify the child’s needs and wishes.

The child / young person will be able to build resilience, self-confidence, self-autonomy, and a healthier wellbeing, whilst learning and understanding how self-awareness and empowerment can make for a better future and reaching their full potential.

The programme is fun, informative and has psychology experiments, educational learning, inspiring information, factual informational, and is aimed at being empowering to promote and develop self-awareness through self-reflection around mental health and wellbeing. The programme also measures wellbeing by using wellbeing scales so that the child/ young person can see how their mental health has improved throughout the programme.

Topics covered include worrying, anxiety, other mental health disorders, perception, emotions, imposters syndrome, spiritual wellbeing, healthy boundaries, and discusses other serious topics around safety planning with details of how to get support.

What are your current priorities?

-To provide the only children’s CPD accredited mental well-being programme in the UK. 

-To promote child-led learning of psychological and psychiatric practices that educate and support a child to heal. 

-To empower the child to use their voice to verbalise problems. 

-To give all children the opportunity to grow in mental strength, building resilience. 

-To avoid diagnosis and pre-labelling a child’s mental health conditions. 

-For the programme to be a part of The National Curriculum for all children in UK schools. 

What challenges are you currently facing?

Funding
High referrals