Tomorrow is too late: suicide prevention support for people with no fixed address
With the NSPA’s partners in the Suicide Prevention Consortium*, we have been exploring suicide prevention support for people with no fixed address.
This 2024 Suicide Prevention Consortium report highlights what policymakers and service providers can do to support suicide prevention for people without a fixed home address.
Through working with people with lived experience and building on the existing evidence base, this report identifies four key themes where improvement is needed:
– Attitudes towards people with no fixed address need to improve. This report highlights the poor treatment that people face and the impact this has on suicide risk and lack of suicide prevention support offered.
– Lack of consistent access to suicide prevention support must be addressed. Our report explores the barriers people face and ways to improve access to suicide prevention support.
– Support must meet the needs of people with no fixed address. There are many different types of support that can help to reduce suicide risk and people’s needs will differ depending on their experiences, support needs to be resourced and available for those who need it.
– Community spaces and peer support have a crucial role in suicide prevention and need to be invested in. People we worked with highlighted the invaluable role that community spaces and peer support has played for them and the need for this to be available more consistently.
* About the Suicide Prevention Consortium
The Suicide Prevention Consortium is led by Samaritans and also includes the National Suicide Prevention Alliance (NSPA), Support After Suicide Partnership (SASP) and With You. As part of the VCSE Health and Wellbeing Alliance, it aims to bring the expertise of its member organisations and the voice of those with lived experience directly to policymakers, to improve suicide prevention in England.