Child Action Northwest

At CANW, we offer support to the most vulnerable children and young people in local communities; children facing poverty, violence, abuse, neglect and family breakdown. It’s what we’ve been doing since 1886, in one form or another! We passionately believe that every child and young person has the right to achieve their full potential, whatever their background or circumstances – and, as a result, we work with over 6000 children, young people and families in the North West of England every year.

We work in the heart of communities – often in partnership with other organisations – to end family cycles of deprivation, drug and alcohol abuse, lack of self-esteem, youth crime, teenage pregnancies and broken families. As a result, we help to strengthen individuals, families and communities so that children and young people can lead healthy and meaningful lives, with the opportunity to succeed in school, to grow up to enjoy healthy relationships, to have access to training and employment opportunities and to be successful in the world of work.

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

We have a number of staff who have undertaken appropriate training and are Orange button holders. We have a number of services that offer therapeutic and counselling support and also hold regular bereavement counselling for young people. In addition, one of our future objectives is to introduce an online basic suicide awareness training as part of our mandatory training

What are your current priorities?

To train more staff in suicide prevention and to bring together those who are currently trained to form an action group. We hope together we can increase the support we currently provide and keep abreast of new initiatives to cope with the changing climate.

What challenges are you currently facing?

Many of our service users are facing increased isolation, fear and uncertainty due to Coronavirus. We have young people and families who are in crisis and need urgent support. Some of the barriers we are currently facing in relation to Covid include face to face interventions and our response has been to develop our remote offer to ensure we are still able to offer support.