Conference line up
We truly believe there’s never been a suicide prevention conference like this before! There'll be an impressive line-up, both top professionals in our field and some of the most effective Lived Experience Campaigners we have in the UK.
The Conference
Brought to you by The Jordan Legacy’s collaborative partner, Paul Vittles, in collaborative partnership with North Lincolnshire Council Public Health.
The #ZeroSuicideSociety Tour will be launched on Wed 12 June 2024 from the iconic Baths Hall in Scunthorpe.
The Eventbrite Conference Bookings Page is NOW LIVE – you can buy a ticket here RIGHT NOW!
OR
Pay via PayPal or Credit/Debit Card using the reference #JoinTheDots – click here
Just look at this line up:
Zero Suicide in Healthcare
and the Culture to Deliver It
Professor Joe Rafferty CBE, CEO of Mersey Care NHS Trust, Co-Founder & Chair of the Zero Suicide Alliance.
Joe has held senior NHS leadership roles as regional director (NHS North West) of strategy and commissioning and chief executive of a primary care trust. He has been named one of the ‘Top 50 NHS CEOs’ by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) for six consecutive years. He has appeared in the Health Service Journal 100 (HSJ100) list of the most influential people in healthcare in the UK.
Joe co-founded the UK Zero Suicide Alliance (ZSA) in 2017, which is hosted by Mersey Care NHS Foundation and funded via Mersey Cares NHS Charity. It aims to educate individuals and organisations on suicide awareness and prevention.
“Missing Pieces of the Puzzle – Suicides Driven by Systemic Injustice or Institutionalised Cruelty”
Nav Mirza
In our Zero Suicide Society model, we have our symbolic ‘Missing Piece’ to constantly remind us who’s being neglected in our collective suicide prevention efforts. One of our contributors includes Nav Mirza from Dads Unlimited.
Nav was the stand-out speaker at the 2024 National Suicide Prevention Alliance (NSPA) Conference, highlighting a story and an issue that has rarely had a profile but which is another key cause or contributory factor for suicide – dads having, or not having, access to their children, and facing the institutional injustice and systemic discrimination of the Family Court.
We can assure you that this one talk/panel alone is worth the ticket price!
Julia Waters
Ruth Perry took her own life on 8 January 2023, 54 days after an Ofsted inspection downgraded the primary school, which she had led for over 13 years, from ‘outstanding’ to ‘inadequate’. She was still waiting for the report to be published and, during that time, had been expressly forbidden from sharing the result with anyone.
The inquest into her death concluded that she had died by ‘suicide, contributed to by an Ofsted inspection carried out in November 2022’ – the first time that an Ofsted inspection had been cited in a Coroner’s report.
Since Ruth’s death, her sister Julia Waters has been campaigning for radical, root-and-branch reform of Ofsted’s punitive, psychologically damaging school inspection system, to prioritise the wellbeing of teachers and school leaders, as well as of children. She is determined that what happened to Ruth should never be allowed to happen again.
You may also want to watch this BBC iPlayer documentary, “Death of a Head” about how Ruth’s death put Ofsted in the spotlight. View here.
Book your ticket here
Our Eventbrite Conference Bookings Page is NOW LIVE – you can buy a ticket here RIGHT NOW!
OR
Pay via PayPal or Credit/Debit Card using the reference #JoinTheDots – click here
Menopause & Suicide
Jo Kent
Many people working in suicide prevention know Jo from her time as the Suicide Prevention Lead for the York, North Yorkshire & Humber area but Jo now runs her own training & consultancy business, Bloom. Jo’s highly engaging, educational and, at times, highly entertaining talk about the relationship between menopause and suicide, and her own personal lived experience of (peri)menopause, has gained her a new title ‘Menopause Woman’!
Suicide Prevention in Higher Education
Bob & Maggie Abrahart
Bob & Maggie lost their daughter Natasha to suicide in April 2018. The University of Bristol was ruled to have contributed to Natasha’s death, confirmed by the High Court after it rejected the University’s appeal – on all 7 counts. Bob & Maggie want to stop us losing more higher education students to suicide. Their powerful campaigns via The LEARN Network and #ForThe100 for a Statutory Duty of Care have lessons for us all.
Suicide Prevention Education in Schools
Mike Palmer
Mike, one of the 3 Dads Walking, will update us on their campaign to get appropriate suicide prevention education in schools, a campaign which included getting 170,000 signatures on their petition, and that petition recently being shortlisted by parliament’s Petitions Committee for the national ‘Petition Campaign of the Year’ Award.
Louisa Rose
Louisa is CEO of the charity Beyond which focuses on the mental health of children & young people aged 4-25. Beyond runs the UK’s biggest mental health festival for schools, which has now supported more than 1 million children. Louisa will tell us about the impressive, impactful work of Beyond (and maybe the story of how she managed to arrange for one of Beyond’s lived experience Youth Board Members, Brady, to be the Unexpected Star of the Show on Michael McIntyre’s Big Show).
Dr Sue Roffey
Sue is a psychologist (Fellow of the British Psychological Society), academic, author, activist & speaker. She’s an Honorary Associate Professor at University College, London; and an Advisory Board Member of the Carnegie Centre for Mental Health in Schools.
She’s an international consultant & speaker, and director of Growing Great Schools Worldwide focused on ‘whole child & whole school’ wellbeing, including teachers.
Sue’s books include ‘Circle Solutions for Student Wellbeing’ for social-emotional learning, “Positive Relationships’, and several on school behaviour. ‘ASPIRE (Agency, Safety, Positivity, Inclusion, Respect, Equity) to Wellbeing and Learning for All: the principles underpinning positive education’ will be published in June (Early Years & Primary) and August (Secondary). http://growinggreatschoolsworldwide.com/publications/books/
Nina Smith
In the 3 months prior to our Launch Conference, former Wigan Primary School Teacher now Edge Hill University PhD researcher, Nina Smith, will be on her Churchill Fellowship tour in Australia & the US, researching School-Based Suicide Prevention Strategies.
She will be able to tell us about her personal & professional journey – Nina tragically lost her brother Will to suicide in 2021 when he was just 30 – key learnings from her research at Edge Hill University, reflections on her Fellowship travel, and key conclusions & recommendations that will be featuring in her Churchill Fellowship Report.
Pulling together the pieces of the puzzle
Tanya Marwaha
Tanya is the founder of Championing Youth Minds… and more! She will help us cover several pieces of the suicide prevention puzzle. Her incredible work with children & young people would be enough to merit a place on our stage but Tanya also gives us valuable perspectives from her lived experience with mental health challenges, long-term physical health challenges, and being part of a community which continues to face discrimination & disadvantage. Also, as a Baton of Hope Organising Committee Member, Tanya was on-the-road for the entire Baton of Hope Tour from Glasgow on 25 June 2023 to London on 6 July. And then an educational tour with Steve Phillip in October in Gibraltar!
Douglas Cave
Doug is Co-founder of The LEARN Network, and a Board and Family Reference Group member at Inquest, and like Tanya, he will help us cover several pieces of our suicide prevention puzzle. Doug lost his daughter Stephanie to suicide in 2016 after she died, unexpectedly, in an NHS mental health hospital. Like many bereaved parents, Doug felt ‘let down by the system’ and now seeks ‘systemic solutions’ to avoiding others having the experience that Stephanie had and that the family have had to endure. LEARN is an acronym for Lived Experience Action Right Now.
Doug is going to specifically cover our Foundation Stone of ‘Lived Experience Involvement’ and our Keystone of ‘Continuous Systemic Action Learning (CSAL)’ and will help us think about what suicide prevention actions can be taken RIGHT NOW!
Performances by…
Melody Reed – Singer-songwriter and quiet Campaigner
The multi-talented Melody Reed has been alongside The Jordan Legacy from the very early days, including putting music to the beautiful poem written by BBC Young Poet of the Year, Olivia Mulligan, to create the song ‘Stay’ for Jordan’s loved ones and others currently struggling with life or trying to support their loved ones. Melody has performed for us at our Hope for Life Conferences and will be with us in Scunthorpe. It’s always a delight to have Melody in the room (and it’s rumoured she might be giving us a premiere of a new song!).
More recently, Melody has run 50km to raise awareness for our petition for a Suicide Prevention Act, and been awarded funding to run workshops to help reduce knife crime and the tension it causes in our communities.
The Rumble Band
Your MC…and Master of Joining the Dots!”
Paul Vittles
The Jordan Legacy’s collaborative partnerm Paul Vittles, is Chief Facilitator of the Zero Suicide Society Transformation Programme, which emerged out of the action research he carried out jointly with Steve Phillip of The Jordan Legacy, and is founded on the report Paul co-authored with Steve and published in 2023 ‘Moving Towards a Zero Suicide Society’.
Paul is also the #ZeroSuicideSociety #JoinTheDots Tour Director and your MC for the Launch Conference and also the big finish ‘Merseyside Festival with Lived Experience Voices’.
Paul has had a long, successful career in research, community engagement, transformational change coaching & consulting, counselling and then working in suicide prevention for 11 years. Paul also has his own lived experience of suicide and has lived with mental illness for more than 20 years. Check out Paul’s bio here.
Paul recorded this podcast with Becky Hirst on 29 Feb 2024 where he talks about suicide & suicide prevention and our Tour, Conference & Festival”
More pieces of the puzzle
Designing Out Suicide: ‘Frequently Used Locations’
Darrell Gale
Darrell is the Director of Public Health for East Sussex. He’s had a particular interest in ‘frequently used locations’ for suicide for many years, as this is a key local issue for East Sussex. He has also recently been awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study other locations around the world to look at patterns in problems and solutions.
Fay Baker
Community-Centred Solutions and Safe, Supportive Spaces
Debbie Rogers
Debbie Rogers lost her brother Sean to suicide in July 2019, and responded by trying to create the kind of place that she felt Sean needed so it would help other men like Sean get the support they need and not take the course Sean did. Under Debbie’s leadership, Sean’s Place in Liverpool has been a phenomenal success, helping 1000s of men struggling with their life or their mental health.
Debbie is also hosting an event at Sean’s Place as part of our #ZeroSuicideSociety #JoinTheDots Tour on the evening of Friday 21 June
Rebecca Jackson
Rebecca lost her 16-year old daughter Elspeth to suicide in 2014. Rebecca has responded with a range of creative, inspiring, community-centred solutions to help others, including children & young people and people of all ages. Via The Big Fandango in Bury, Rebecca provides craft workshops, training courses, and a safe, supportive space for those who need it. Rebecca was also commissioned by the Greater Manchester Suicide Prevention Programme to make the very first ‘Speak Their Name Quilt’.
Our #ZeroSuicideSociety #JoinTheDots Tour will be in Bury, and at The Big Fandango, on Tuesday 18 June.
Allison Furlong
Allison has experienced the pain of suicide loss and the pride of seeing her son, Alfie, respond in the most uplifting & inspiring way by setting up Alfie’s Squad to provide much-needed peer support to other children bereaved by suicide, aged 6-17. Alfie lost his dad aged just 8, set up Alfie’s Squad aged 9 and now, aged 15, is providing peer support to children all over Merseyside and Greater Manchester, delivering lived experience talks, successfully fundraising…and appearing on BBC Breakfast!
For our Merseyside Festival on Sat 22 June & Sun 23 June, Alfie will be on our stage!
Ellie Palma-Cass
Ellie is a ‘suicide survivor’ and, to reduce the high suicide rate in her home town of Wigan, the founder of EPiC HOPE (for people in the boroughs of Wigan & Leigh). EPiC HOPE is a community-centred ‘listen-provide-listen-evolve’ support service for anyone who needs a listening ear, or who is struggling with life or with their mental health.
EPiC HOPE provides safe, supportive spaces – ‘Harbours’ – along with information, resources, signposting, training, peer support, wrap-around care packages…basically whatever people need to help them through a crisis and go on to thrive.
Workplace
A BSI (potentially ISO) Standard for Suicide Prevention
Marcus Long
Marcus Long lost his 21-year old son, Adam, to suicide in October 2020. As a global expert in the process of devising and implementing BSI & ISO Standards to assist organisations wanting to assure consistently high standards in areas such as Quality Assurance or Environmental Sustainability (as the BSI strapline puts it “making excellence a habit”), Marcus has launched an initiative to devise a Standard for Suicide Prevention. Marcus will give us the latest update on developments.
Jeremy O’Dwyer
Book here
The Eventbrite Conference Bookings Page is NOW LIVE – you can buy a ticket here RIGHT NOW!
OR
Pay via PayPal or Credit/Debit Card using the reference #JoinTheDots – click here
Tech for Good
Darren Barden
Darren Barden has had two near-death experiences. One was being viciously attacked by two masked men, beaten to a pulp, and stabbed 47 times – in a case of mistaken identity! The other was, many years later, experiencing PTSD, depression and a suicide crisis. Darren says if he had to go through one of these two experiences again “I’d take the beating and the stabbing every time because it wasn’t as painful”. Darren has developed a potentially ground-breaking mental health and suicide prevention app called iTalk, initially for the Construction sector, but with plans to be universally available.
We’ll also have a panel covering the latest on Tech for Good initiatives, including our good friends & partners at R;pple Suicide Prevention.
Luke Haseldine
Missing Pieces in the Puzzle: Witnessing a Suicide
Alison Dunn
As CEO of Citizens’ Advice Gateshead, Alison knows about many of the causes & contributory factors for suicide, such as poverty or financial distress, relationship breakdown, housing stress & homelessness, unemployment, and the fact her home Region of the North East has a suicide rate twice that of London. Alison invited Paul Vittles onto her podcast ‘This is the North’ to discuss this. Click here to listen.
But then, the day before recording the podcast, Alison witnessed a highly public suicide on her way to work, and her life changed forever that day.
Alex Harvey
Alex is Head of Partnerships & Innovation for the leading national charity, Grassroots Suicide Prevention. Among the many excellent information, training & support services that Grassroots provide, it pioneered the first ever guide dedicated to support for those people who have witnessed a suicide (or suicide attempt) – First Hand.
Alex will tell us more about First Hand, and what more can be done to support those who are witnesses to the suicide of someone they don’t know. https://first-hand.org.uk/
Domestic Abuse & Violence: from a Missing Piece to a National Strategy Priority Group
Tim Woodhouse
Tim is well known in Kent & Medway as the Programme Manager who has co-ordinated the Kent & Medway Suicide Prevention Multi-Agency Steering Group. Among many local initiatives, one has grabbed national attention when local evidence showed at least a third of suicides could be traced to domestic abuse or domestic violence (DA/DV), leading to DA/DV being prioritised in the new National Strategy.
Tim continues to be a national (and potentially now a global) leader in the relationship between DA/DV & suicide, after being awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study good practice in reducing DA/DV-related suicides, including study trips to Iceland, Slovenia & the USA. Tim is also a Steering Group Member of the National Suicide Prevention Alliance (NSPA).
Andrew Pain
Every year in the UK, around 700,000 men are the victims of domestic abuse or domestic violence. Andrew Pain has lived through this experience, including not thinking of it as DA/DV from his female partner until a neighbour called it out for what it was. Andrew now draws from his lived experience to educate and help others about DA/DV and the male perspectives that are rarely heard.
Helping people & organisations talk about suicide
Steve Phillip
After losing his son Jordan to suicide in December 2019, Steve Phillip founded The Jordan Legacy to try and help prevent others having Jordan’s experience or the pain and suffering Jordan’s loved ones continue to endure.
Among other things, Steve is now a much-in-demand ‘Lived Experience Speaker’, an ever-present presence on LinkedIn publishing posts and articles on suicide awareness & suicide prevention that get millions of views.
And Steve is the host of Jordan’s Space, the world’s only fortnightly radio show focused on suicide prevention, which gives a platform for hearing diverse lived experience voices.
Learn more about Steve here
Complex Lived Experience ‘Stories’ & Journeys
Every ‘story’ or ‘journey’ is unique. Some are easier to communicate, including some that are more ‘media friendly soundbites’ in the form the media craves, ie ‘I had this exposure to suicide, this was the impact, this is what I’m doing now’.
But many ‘stories’ are messy, complex, multi-faceted, going back over years of trauma and several ‘incidents’, with many other people being part of the story. The more complex & messy, the less these stories are heard. But they need to be heard.
Marc Ewen
Marc is a highly skilled and experienced mental health & suicide prevention trainer; a former social worker; an experienced hostels & social housing manager; a trainer in user-led mental health planning and service delivery; a former ‘expert by experience’ CQC Inspector; a part-time lecturer and curriculum adviser; a researcher, evaluator, policy developer, and adviser on how to create and sustain mentally healthy and psychologically safe workplaces.
But Marc lives with Complex PTSD and, as a result, he lives with systemic discrimination as well as all of the challenges that led to his Complex PTSD, including abuse as a child. For example, as Marc tries to help other people with Complex PTSD by applying for jobs in the Mental Health sector, he’s told he has to have a car and/or be able to drive as part of the job, but Marc can’t drive a car…because he has Complex PTSD!
Paul Chambers
Paul’s ‘lived experience journey’ was summed up in our Jordan’s Space radio interview with him as “From 30 years of self-abuse and mental torment to finding the creativity in others“. It’s a real life ‘story’ of living with a severe speech impediment, the distress caused by his parents divorcing when Paul was 5 years old, alcohol & drugs misuse, mental breakdown, and attempting to end his life.
Paul’s ‘hope journey’ is uplifting as he’s used his lived experience, his complex ‘mental health bingo card’, and the creative arts, notably poetry, to run workshops in businesses, schools, care homes, and prisons, to help others express their emotions, including the often hidden feelings that imprison many people and need to be given their freedom.
Melanie Costas
We approached Melanie at first to talk about ‘the missing piece’ that is mental health & suicide prevention in rural areas, due to her work leading ‘Rural Mental Health Matters’, but Melanie – also known as ‘The Pink-Haired Warrior’ – then opened up about her complex mix of disabilities & challenges.
Melanie has lived for many years with long-term physical health conditions, including experiencing chronic pain, and has learned to manage medication and mitigation in all its forms. She’d already had mental health issues before being diagnosed with breast cancer – when she ‘went Pink’ – with that experience leading to her PTSD.
So her personal lived experience adds an important layer to the issues around living in a rural area, eg with poor internet access and a 3-hour bus trip to services people in cities take for granted, which Melanie is well known for highlighting.
And…more ‘pieces of the puzzle’ to be announced soon!
Is Your Organisation a Potential Sponsor or ‘Corporate Donor’ for the Conference and/or the Tour?
If you’d like to sponsor the Launch Conference, the Tour or any component part of the Tour, or any part of our Zero Suicide Society Transformation Programme, please get in touch via hello@thejordanlegacy.com
There are options for:
· Main Sponsor of the Zero Suicide Society Transformation Programme
· Main Sponsor of the Launch Conference at Baths Hall
· Other Conference Sponsors (eg sponsoring a particular panel session, or funding the arts & music programme)
· Other Event/Tour Sponsors (eg for each individual location or event along our journey, or the cycle ride)
· Sponsoring individual ‘pieces of the puzzle’ (eg being our Healthcare Sponsor or Education Sponsor or Workplaces Sponsor or Tech for Good Sponsor).
Donate to support The Jordan Legacy
You can also make a donation right now to support The Jordan Legacy, either via the website (donate button top right ) or via this JustGiving Page to fund the ongoing action research on which the Zero Suicide Society Transformation Programme is based.