Miranda Frost: Independent Suicide Prevention Trainer and Consultant

I use my experience, knowledge, skills and passion to educate, help coordinate, facilitate and advise organisations and services on shaping and implementing their suicide prevention strategies. I have been involved in establishing a range of collaborative partnerships with suicide prevention colleagues. I am passionate about meaningful and practical involvement of people with lived experience in all areas of suicide prevention.

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

I deliver quality suicide prevention related training to a range of professionals, organisations and community members. This includes bespoke work for specific high-risk groups e.g. primary care, children and young people, people who self-injure, people with mental health difficulties. I am a consulting trainer for ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) and support new trainers to be their best and to deliver in their local areas.

I sit on the NSPA steering groups and contribute knowledge and expertise to a range of related forums and organisations.  I provide consultancy to statutory and community groups progressing their suicide prevention strategies and implementation. I persistently seek and create opportunities to raise awareness of suicide and its impact as a community and public health issue.  In turn I use these opportunities to facilitate organisations, services and individuals to identify their needs and gaps in relation to suicide prevention (training and coordination of activity to reduce suicide) and inspire and guide them to take effective and practical action.
I am an advocate of providers proactively engaging people to seek help through overcoming stigma, reducing access barriers and providing choice regarding relevant, timely and effective support and intervention.

I proactively connect people and projects to each other in order to share and collaborate on good practice, lessons learned and to avoid recreating wheels.

What are your current priorities?

We plan to continue to deliver and develop relevant accredited and bespoke suicide prevention and related training packages to diverse audiences.  Throughout this work I promote whole community engagement in suicide prevention and inspire agencies and individuals I work with to really make a difference.

We will facilitate awareness raising, stigma reduction and effective practical capacity building in suicide prevention strategy, coordination and implementation across whole communities, public health, and organisational (statutory, private and third sector) settings.

And develop and support the roll out of meaningful effective involvement of people with lived experience of suicide in all areas of suicide prevention activity thus creating more relevant, robust innovative and responsive policy, strategies and service provision scenarios.

What challenges are you currently facing?

Suicide prevention is now more firmly on national and local agendas than ever. This welcome shift creates opportunities to effectively engage and influence communities on many levels. It also creates significant challenges and discrepancies in the quality and effectiveness of e.g. action plans and their implementation, training and service delivery.

The threshold and outcomes measurements for evidence is also challenging especially for individuals and small organisations active within the field. I personally believe in knowing, being mindful of and embodying my core values around suicide prevention in all my work and being whilst being open to continued learning and development. In this way I trust these challenges provide exciting opportunities for change.