Our Mission
The Jordan Legacy is a not-for-profit business with purpose. We are a registered (Registered No. 12784768) Community Interest Company (CIC). We re-invest all profits toward our mission of seeking ways of better supporting those who are feeling a sense of entrapment and hopelessness and, specifically, to reduce the number of lives being lost to suicide.
The Jordan Legacy CIC was established in memory of Jordan Phillip
Our mission is to help us move toward a ‘zero suicide society’ which, in our eyes, is a society that is willing and able to do all it can to prevent all preventable suicides.
Most suicides are preventable, so our goal must surely be to prevent most suicides!
Our Challenge
Across the UK, more than 6,000 people die by suicide each year, and this has been the case for the past 15 years with no downward movement in the annual death toll.
In each and every case of losing a loved one to suicide, the impact is devastating, as it was with losing Jordan. And the pain of suicide loss endures.
Not everyone is affected by suicide but anyone can be affected by suicide.
There is also a huge ripple effect. An average of 135 people are impacted by each suicide death (family, friends, work colleagues, neighbours, etc) which means more than 800,000 people in the UK are affected by a suicide death every year.
For each suicide death, around 20 people make suicide attempts. Research suggests that most people who attempt to take their own lives do not want to die, they simply want to escape the intense mental or physical pain they are suffering. People in crisis often feel hopelessly trapped and need support through their crisis.
The reasons people choose to end their lives are often complex and varied. There is often no single contributing factor which causes someone to take this most drastic of actions. What we do know is that many who make suicide attempts do so without letting anyone close to them know they’re considering taking their own life.
How can more people be aware of the signs, in ourselves and others, and better understand how to take action to save lives – through early identification, early intervention, suicide prevention initiatives, ‘postvention’ support for those experiencing loss, and positive promotion of optimal mental health?
How can we work together – those with lived experience of suicide, those already working in suicide prevention, governments, communities, workplaces, etc – to help individuals and groups create hope through action and get the annual suicide death toll on a downward trend, ultimately towards zero?
Our Vision
We feel we must have ambition and can envisage an achievable desired state where deaths by suicide are very rare events. It’s a huge challenge and a big goal but achievable through prioritised, focused, practical actions to, for example:
- make our communities and workplaces mentally healthy and psychologically safe places;
- combine human intelligence and digital technology for earlier identification and intervention;
- ‘design out suicide’ (or ‘design in suicide prevention’) in our built environment, education systems, health systems, and support systems for those known to be at risk or in danger (including restricting access to the means of suicide);
- encourage every hospital, university, council, employer, industry association, professional society, etc to make practical plans for suicide prevention within their spheres of influence
- build collaborative relationships with all those who share our belief that we can considerably reduce the number of suicides, with joint action to make that difference.
The act of suicide is a practical act – it needs practical actions to prevent it.
And suicide prevention is a mix of individual action and collective action, with everyone being able to make a contribution – from supporting individuals to collaborating in collective suicide prevention initiatives.
Our Practical Actions
In all its interactions and communications, The Jordan Legacy encourages high ambition in preventing suicides, promoting strategies and actions that can significantly reduce the numbers of deaths by suicide in the UK. We also challenge groups, organisations and bodies who appear to have low ambition.
The Jordan Legacy provides relevant information, advice, awareness-raising, education, and support. We share ‘what works’ with the general public and those groups, organisations, institutions and individuals who are able to help save lives.
We design and run events, conferences, workshops, awareness-raising campaigns, educational talks, radio shows, etc to help improve mental health and save lives.
We commission, carry out and disseminate research that can assist in improving mental health and suicide prevention.
And, finally, we understand that many of those who engage with us may be struggling with their mental health or suicidal thoughts. Whilst not a crisis support service, we do what we can to safeguard these individuals by providing direct support, where appropriate, with non-clinical coaching and social support, along with signposting and partnering with relevant professionals and clinical specialists.
