Recruiting for change

Bringing about organic cultural change.

I think it’s widely understood that for change to happen successfully and to be self sustaining there needs to be a cultural shift for any 5 year plan for the NHS to work.

Clearly one way is via SHCR reaching out to NHS staff to create change agents. This has a finite limit, only those who want to learn about being change makers will engage.

What has been abundantly clear observing this term of students is that there is one defining quality common to all no matter of status, role or location. That is their underlying caring nature, what is in their hearts and what underpins their personal satisfaction and rewards is helping people.

I don’t think these qualities are or should be the exclusive domain of those directly involved in delivering care. No matter what your role in the NHS, you, patients and the NHS will benefit directly from your passion to help, you will do a better job because it matters to you.

For that reason as part of every recruitment process, be it for book keepers, IT people, lab technicians, senior management or maintenance staff, identifying those who genuinely care and have a compassionate nature will be the ones who will stay in post because of the job rewards.

I would encourage management to ensure all those “behind the scenes” people get to spend some time closer to the patient experience so they can engage in that feeling of reward and making a difference. This would do much for the sense of cultural cohesion around a trust and would break down barriers and hierachies.  

The staff churn rate in care and in some areas in health runs as high as 19%. The cost in terms of recruitment and training that is lost to the NHS is hundreds of millions per year. People who have found their vocation and get the job rewards mean retention levels go up and the depth of experience is retained by way of organisational wisdom.  

So if at the recruitment phase measuring compassion was possible, this would improve retention, it would also be drawing the right kind of people into the NHS, so over time, perhaps 5 years the ”workforce” has been revitalised with more of the right kind of people.

A change in how the NHS recruits and the values it seeks, which might carry more weight than qualifications in some roles, is how longer term the NHS can organically change and bring about sustainable change in my view.

The recruitment tool I made for the care sector, that are already tried and tested on 1000’s of people can easily be modified to also identify those who will be open to change as well as having that special something.

As we have seen from SHCR it is the caring nature that has driven the desire to bring about change…

The cost of doing this is tiny, compared to the year on year savings via improved retention. If you can't think of a downside then you do have to ask yourself why it shouldn't be piloted:) or have I oversimplified things again? 

Framing

I have used a lifetime of acquired skills in mainstream corporate communication combined with my insight in to what it is to have a learning disability as I am dyslexic to make a difference for people with learning disabilities.

I converted a 43 page legal tenancy agreement for supported living tenants in to an accessible see and hear format, the visual language was developed with continuous input from people with LD. I am now using this work as a basis for new tools to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities.

Having had unanimous positive feedback from both Clinical and academic people including professors of learning disabilities and the LD nursing community I want to bring the suicide prevention tools for people with LD into daily use by the NHS.

There are many advocates and endorsements for my work in this field I now want to form a group of academics and medical people to support the project and take it to the decision commissioners in the NHS so people with learning disabilities can benefit from this piece of work.

Reflections on Module One

If like me you have dyslexia and you have to say out loud School for Health and Care Radicals in order to type #SHCR because the letters are like bars of soap in the shower, the tighter you grasp them the further they go, it’s probably impacted your life from a very early age.

I can still remember being at primary school and being forced to stay in the head mistresses office for an excruciating length of time until I read the word “Garden” out loud, that was 52 years ago! And it still makes me clammy to think about it in writing this.

Having failed the 11+ my self confidence took a massive knock, having failed to live up to my parent’s expectations. Secondary school was even worse, back then the more enlightened teachers called it word blindness, but the majority labelled it as laziness. It was a humiliating and damaging experience. Perhaps the only positive thing that came from it was I discovered that I was “a creative” type, and that my artistic side was one area in which I could excel.

My teens and 20’s were in hindsight a period of self harm, as I sought to bury my feelings of failure and inadequacy with drugs.

To survive in the world I had to rely on “intelligence” and a creative approach to life that was not based on reading, education or conventional learning. I had to find other ways to function and absorb information about new things. Above all I learned to improvise, to solve problems with practical skills and common sense and NOT by the book.

To me this is the only way I know how to operate; I am totally left brained if you like. I also grew to dislike process, that works for those who are wired that way but for me it often seems to be a replacement for the intuitive. In fact it often appears to me to stifle free thinking with its rules and structure.

After 35 years of making it up as I went along as a video director/producer/lighting cameraman in the corporate world I started getting involved in the social housing, health and care sectors. This type of work gave me rewards I had not previously experienced and not knowing what I couldn’t do I created a visual language for people with learning disabilities as in my view this was about human skills, communication in its purest sense.

Perhaps arrogantly I felt that it was unlikely that a learning disability “professional” be it academic or clinical would be likely to have the skills I felt were important. I also felt my own disability was perhaps for the first time a gift.

Out of that project came another challenge, to make a suicide prevention tool for people with learning disabilities. Again all I had was instinct and a modicum of intelligence to throw at it. 

I spent 18 months living with it, refining reflecting and polishing. It then dawned on my as to why I was dragging my feet, because to go public to a world of Dr’s Professor’s, LD experts, LD nurses was to be put back in the head mistresses room, to be back a school, to be back in a world that was wired so differently.

What I was fearful of was rejection and failure, that my thinking was off the mark, that I had dared to say I think I know how to do it better. This is why the self efficacy element in module one really rang bells for me.

What gave me the confidence and self belief was also the thing I feared most, stepping up to the plate and being judged.

In taking the risk, being passionate about what I believed in and sharing what I thought was the right approach with a world, that I had always felt on the edge of was and is life changing.

I still have to pinch myself when I look at the universally positive feedback I have received in the last 6 months while it has been out there in it’s pilot phase.

For me a great deal of what module one has covered is instinctive, I can’t help but operate that way as my only qualification is the work that I do. I have always run my own business so the hierarchies I encounter are always external….How can I possibly influence the NHS to use my tool from the outside.

In the case of the suicide prevention project and other work around enhancing communications for patients with learning disabilities the turning point in terms of my self efficacy was down to a few people who validated my efforts, and judged me by my thinking not my status or qualifications.

So for me one of the best ways of bringing about change is to “enable” those around me by giving them confidence in their dreams and aspirations as well as having confidence in my own thinking and beliefs.

I think the power of #SHCR is the validation it brings us all, that we are not alone, what we believe in is right and because of what motivates us as humans we “know” that our intentions are in the right place, guided by what is in our hearts.

It is so rewarding to see people who have been hitherto trapped by toxic cultures, colleagues grasping at power and the myriad of obstacles that previously seem insurmountable suddenly see a shaft of light, a new possibility, by allowing their creative minds the space to think out side the box.

Revisiting the school experience for me is a chance to rewrite “what is possible” in my terms.

Family Courts are intimidating places for people with learning disabilities

The Family Court Support toolsCreative Treatment by Jon Bryant based on an idea from The Dudley Advocacy

copyright Jon Bryant 2015

The desire to find a partner in life and to have children is part of what it is to be human, it is a fundamental right we all take for granted. Society is built around the human need to have children and become a family unit, for many it is the single most important ambition in life, to be in a loving relationship and have children. This is a fundamental human right we all take for granted.

Life can be very different if you have a learning disability, society can intervene if there are concerns that your ability to be a competent parent is in doubt.

People with learning disabilities have learning disabilities, they do not by default have a feeling disability and experience the same emotions of joy and sadness that we do in response to events and circumstances in life.

If as a result of a loving and affectionate relationship involving people with learning disabilities a child comes along, this is where society intervenes and triggers the involvement of the state. Its seeks to protect the interests of the child first, will the parents with their support network be fit and able to raise a child with all that entails?

Learning disabilities can be in a range from profound to just a mild intellectual impairment so the State has to make decisions based on an assessment of their competency to provide and care for the child as a family unit.

To better understand how that is for a couple with a learning disability, putting ourselves in their shoes is a very valuable exercise in how best to support them in reaching the right outcomes and life choices.

Let’s imagine you have found someone, a soul mate, the person you want to share your life with, these are universal feelings, no different from a parent living in a remote tribe in the rain forest. It has nothing to do with education or the ability to learn, it is instinctive. The tribe’s people may not have made the connection that sex makes babies, but are still perfectly capable of being great parents with all the joy that brings.

The loss of a child is no less traumatic and life changing because they are uneducated and lead simple lives.

Imagine this…

Your partner becomes pregnant or perhaps you have already had child with whom you have bonded and has become the centre of your world. Then one day you are told you have to go to the Family Courts because “people” have decided that they need to make a decision about your children.

Imagine that Family Court was somewhere in a foreign land, where you did not understand much of the language or the rules, the court from the outside  looked like a prison or police station with all the security guards at the entrance. When the burly uniformed guards after looking for guns, knives and explosives with scanners let you in, then you were taken to a room full of strangers.

There are one or two of the people you do recognise, people who have visited you at home who seemed really friendly and always asked you questions and got you to show them how you did things.  It’s hard to understand everything they say but they seem to be saying that you and your partner are not able to look after your child properly even with the help you get.

In the room which is totally unfamiliar and scary, as it has nothing comforting or homely around it reminds you of a hospital, but smells very different, there is also a person called the Judge, you remember from the TV that Judges lock nasty people up in prison for doing bad things, you get very anxious that perhaps you have done something wrong.

By now you’re very nervous, unsettled, struggling to understand what people are saying and when someone asks you a question all the strangers in the room stare at you.  Your mouth goes dry, you feel shaky and unhappy. You know what you say seems to be important to everyone but the whole experience has left you so anxious you can’t find the right words, after all you have never spoken in public before. Your are scared that  if you said the wrong thing they will take your child away, or maybe stop you seeing your best friend in the world.

Be honest if this happened to you tomorrow in a foreign court in a foreign land with laws and processes you were unfamiliar with how frightening would that be?

How well you be able to “speak for yourself” in such an intimidating set of circumstances? 

How would you feel if in not being able to express yourself because you were petrified and confused, meant your baby or toddler was as a result taken from you forever? Even if you were OK about it how do you console your distraught partner.

Our Aims

This project seeks to address the issues raised above, Family Courts frequently have to make rulings on the fitness of couples with learning disabilities to bring up children and this can result in children being removed.

A vital part of that decision making process is the Judge weighing up the information provided by social workers and carers, gaining some insight into the parents themselves, their life circumstances, aspirations, understanding and capabilities.

There will be occasions where the parent’s contribution to the proceedings will directly affect the final outcome, if you couldn't say what you wanted to when it mattered.

Family Court or Fortress?

Family Courts deal with family matter, so are already very different from other courts setting and much has been done to make them as “unintimidating” as possible so they are typically less formal.

However for a person with a learning disability just the building itself may appear deeply intimidating. What you and I accept as part of everyday life  by way of burly uniformed security guards, with their squealing hand held metal detectors and security arches we have to walk through one at a time to enter buildings is totally alien and frightening for them.

So just getting in to the Family Court building will challenge some in extreme ways that it’s very hard for us to comprehend, ask those with a fear of flying or agoraphobia about the profound ways their ”phobias” affect them, this is no different.

Awareness and understanding

It’s fair to say that virtually everyone attending a Family Court has good comprehension of why they having to go there, what has lead to it, what is to be ruled on, and what the likely outcomes might be dependent on the Judge’s ruling be they good or bad.

For a couple with learning disabilities gaining this understanding of the process is a challenge in itself, this is another area the tools will address. Booklets in Easy Read format are in our opinion helpful but there is a far more effective and comprehensive approach we are promoting.

In order to make Family Courts less intimidating and more learning disability friendly there are many things to address, it is a process of education and familarisation not confined the just the parents attending court.

The aims of this project go beyond the parents to the Courts themselves, rising awareness and educating ALL court staff from the security people to the Judge about the things they can do to make the visit to the Court a less stressful and intimidating experience for the parents.

A good model for this is what cinemas have done to make movies accessible and autism friendly. The screenings take in to account the things autistic people experience and react badly to, so lights are left on, soundtracks are turned down and if they wish they can spend time in the cinema prior to the screening to become at ease with their surroundings.

These are simple measures that cost virtually nothing, are easy to implements and utterly transform the moving going experience for the autistic person allowing them perhaps for the first time in their lives to see the movies their friends have.

The unfamiliar and unknown is far more stressful for many people with learning disabilities, so familiarisation is a corner stone of our approach.

Probable Format

At this early stage prior to research we envisage the tools will come in the form of a downloadable “app” with access to the various video elements. It may also be made to work on a menu driven DVD. The production format would allow us to add bespoke media to personalize it to the Family Court in the borough.

To make the tools properly accessible for the parents I will be drawing on my experience in creating and using visual languages to enhance communications of complex subjects for learning disabled people as well as many years in mainstream video production and direction.

The recourses we want to create have two objectives and two audiences.

1)    To, train and facilitate Family Court staff to make the courts and the court proceedings less intimidating and more accessible for learning disabled parents.

2)    To provide tools that all the agencies involved (social workers etc) in the lives of the parents, including their carers and families. It would be used prior to the hearing and also on the day to support and  familiarise the parents making the unknown a known and to help them feel safe and at ease to “speak for themselves in court” and to arrive there with an understanding of the process. The other important job is to ensure that the strange surroundings and security do not overwhelm them before events have even begun.

For the Parents

By producing a range of short informal video interviews featuring a Judge, court staff including security people who will talk about their jobs, they become familiar, reassuring the viewer that they are real people who want to help.

“I am the security man our job is to make sure you are safe while you are here, keep your eye open for my smiley face badge, here is my scanner I call him Rover after my dog” ….“I am the judge we are not scary people, I am always very friendly to speak to and I really do want to listen to what you have to say, so if you are nervous I understand I won’t rush you I am here to help as I want what is best for you”

For the court staff

This will be a short video based programme designed to convey how the whole experience of a day in court is experienced by people with learning disabilities and the things they can do to help, like smiling, taking a bit more time to explain things, and possibly overcoming a little stigma en route.

Practical Measures

I am developing a range of concepts where little things could be done, maybe the Security Guard wears a smiley face badge, the portable scanner has a name, the judge and court staff and others present each have a card in front to them, not names but colours and shapes about postcard size. These will tie back into the interviews where the card will be established so the parents know the red triangle is the Judge, the green square is the social worker etc.

They will be established early on within the interviews as little reassurances.  It will be easy for the advocate of social worker to have a simple map on paper or a tablet so that the parents understand who is who within the courtroom when they are speaking.

Production

On the filming side we need to shoot a range of interviews, the judge for example might benefit from being interviewed at home, informally over a cup of tea in the kitchen, this will help the viewer see that they are just regular people who have a job called “Judge”.  Court staff might take us on an informal tour of the court room so people know what to expect, perhaps the enlightened courts would allow access prior to parents appearing for them to overcome some of the fears and feel more at ease.

The second part of the filming might be with the parents with learning disabilities and people in their lives talking about some of the things they struggle with, I want to let court staff see life through their eyes to engender empathy and understanding.

We want them to “own” the responsibility as a team to make their court building learning disabled friendly. With a little planning I am sure having allotted times in their schedule where cases involving learning disabled people are heard would be the best way forwards in the interest of all parties.

The APP, we need this to work on iPads, tablets and laptops, and with or without an internet connection.  The tool itself is not complex in structure nor is it feature rich, it needs to work for all, so a person with a mild learning disability should be able to use it independently. Or if help is needed work through it with their social worker, support team carers or family who may not always be skilled at such things. Most people can use a DVD.

copyright Jon Bryant 2015

Radical thinking or is it?

           Is Radical the new Common Sense?

written last year before I discovered #SHCR

After 30 + years directing and producing in the corporate arena I decided to see if my acquired skills would benefit the Care, Health and Social Housing sectors. The work was far more rewarding and there was and is a genuine chance to “make a difference”.

As I began to immerse myself in these sectors the serial problem solver in me saw opportunities where a bit of lateral thinking and not knowing what I couldn't do led to concepts popping up where I was challenging the conventional wisdom for the benefit of all.

All well and good until I tried to take these ideas forward, the NHS is such a sprawling and complex entity it was always impossible to find a way in. I had more success in the care sector, having won at a Skills for Care tender I produced a recruitment tool for identifying applicants for carer roles who had that “special thing” a compassionate nature.

They are the ones who get real job satisfaction and always put the patient first without the need to be trained to do so, it’s a human instinct for them.

I count myself as one of them and believe that if it’s “not in you” it can be a hard trait to even recognise for many, let alone place the real value in those qualities that I believe one should. So if you can’t spot that quality in people at the recruitment phase then everything that follows becomes process driven to compensate and we are where we are post Francis. 

I don't believe for example that training nurses to be more compassionate was the right response, they just needed enabling as that was the reason they chose the to be a nurse, they were born to care in the vast majority of cases. 

Too much process also means people loose ownership of their role and the obsession with hierarchies and the toxic combination of financial pressures chocked off internal communication, there was a one way valve only allowing communication to flow downwards.

So as I see it, innovation, creative problem solving, ownership of your role and any form of "risk taking" to challenge the conventional wisdom to improve patient experiences and outcomes was killed off. “I will never get that past my manager” became the mantra as did bullying cultures and all the negative fallout that generates. 

As an outsider the prevailing culture in recent years has been that people like me who might have positive things to offer can't be heard. After all what could someone with no medical or academic experience have to offer? So over the last few years I have tried and failed to present simple common sense solutions to anyone in the NHS...sure you know where this is going:) 

Given I am not a spring chicken and have definitely experienced ageism in recent years, at the age of 60 going to an event where Helen Bevan quite exquisitely described the attributes of people like me, so called  “citizen radicals” who could be trusted and whose ideas were based on common sense & experience was liberating.

To put that in context I have for the past 18 months put my heart and soul in to creating a suicide prevention tool for people with a learning disability. Getting people to test it and feedback was a slog and the NHS remained like Fort Knox.

Within 7 days of attending the NewHCVoices event in Birmingham I am now having to slow everyone down from helping me so I don’t waste this fantastic opportunity to create a meaningful evidence base for the project so it has the support to go national and hopefully help save more lives.

Then within a few months Jodi tweeted me an invite to join SHCR as a student,has turned my perceptions of the NHS on it's head. This organsiational change in mentality, acknowledgement of the value of "people wisdom" and open door approach to embracing new ways of thinking and bringing about positive change is to my mind one of the biggest and most positive things the NHS has ever done to improve itself.

It is possible.

@Chicustard

 

How do you test a tool like this?

Testing a Suicide Prevention tool for

people with learning disabilities

Having produced a “See and Hear” version of a 40 page legally worded tenancy agreement for supported living tenants I was approached by Grassroots, a suicide prevention charity based in Brighton to make a suicide prevention tool for people with learning disabilities.

In common with many creative people the “black dog” of depression wags its tail from time to time. On reflection, although it made working on such an emotive subject really heavy going sometimes there was an upside. It gave me some insight into how my audience would be feeling.

I have always thought that having a learning disability does not mean emotions are perceived in a different way, it just means you have a “learning” disability not an emotional one.

When you invest as much as I did in a project like this it gets very personal, I had also foolishly promised a “benchmark” solution so when it came time to launch it in to the “Twittersphere” of academics and experts in the field I was one nervous puppy!

As the feedback started to come in each day was another box ticked and apart from a few technical glitches that were easy to resolve we have yet to receive and negative comments. Better still there seems genuine interest in it being used nationally rather than just Brighton and Hove.

That’s where you come in, we need your help, some things lend themselves to “trials” or “market research & consumer feedback” in my parlance. So how do you evaluate a suicide prevention tool, not a by mortality rate that’s for sure! I found it to be quite a brainteaser.

So here is my question for you...

What are the criteria you suggest for measuring the effectiveness of the tool and gaining “data” that is both meaningful and steers any refinements to be made? 

Through meeting people at the @NewHCVoices event in November my options have increased dramatically to the point where I have needed to take a step back and slow the roll out down to make best advantage of us all working together to make this a benchmark tool filling a gap as there is nothing else like it. We are also exploring its potential use in prisons.

Tweet me @Chicustard & @grassroots and let’s get the conversation started. 

Jon Bryant Copyright  2018 

Engaging Heads Hearts and Minds

Heads Hearts and Minds

Copyright Jon Bryant 2015

My mentor the creator of the Andrex puppy adds, Captain Birds eye and the iconic Old Spice surfer campaign taught me the value of understanding the Heads Hearts and Minds of any audience you wish to talk to.

With 35 years of corporate programme making under my belt I have had to communicate with virtually every audience imaginable, over time you learn to speak “their language” and almost instinctively ask the right questions and listen to get inside their thought processes at an emotional level.

To me this is a very informal gut instinct human process, I should add that I have dyslexia so left school with one O level in art, so I don’t follow the academic route when it comes to research. 

For me the test of a programme is simple… does it work for its intended audience? This being far more important than making it work for the commissioner, that is the only evidence base I have ever needed, you are only as good as your last video production in my line of work.

Then along came this project…. When you find yourself talking to a mother whose 16 year old boy hung himself just a few months previously it becomes very real and you realise the stakes you are playing for…it was very grounding and humbling experience.

I have some insight into an audience with learning disabilities having converted a 40 page legal tenancy agreement in to a “see and hear” version for supported living tenants. So I had already faced the daunting challenge faced in communicating to as wider audience as possible across the LD spectrum.  I worked with a group of about 10 supported living tenants who were my very willing testers as I refined my ideas.

But this project was not about rules, rights and regulations, but pure emotion. So for my research as the director there was the more practical quantifiable stuff like visual language to establish and where it should be pitched in terms of its complexity but that only part of the task.

The other aspect to my “research” was better understanding what it is like for a person with a learning disability to have these feelings and how to express them. I did a lot of my learning via twitter just joining in to conversations, asking questions and trying to get insight in to the person with a learning disability through the eyes of their principle carer.  In time I started exchanging emails with some of these twitter contacts and spoke to a few by phone as well.

Two mothers came forwards who really added hugely to my understanding so big thanks to them.  One had very recently lost her 16 year old son, he was on the high functioning end of the spectrum and via his mum I learned so much about what made him happy and how he communicated finding text and chat far easier than face to face.

The other mother has a daughter with autism, who could do very little for herself although she was getting a lot of life skills coaching, she was prone to regular bouts of severe depression. 

Her mum said there was one thing her daughter was proficient at, one life skill where she showed her ability to plan, organize and think ahead…and that was attempting to take her own life often several times a month. As a result of deliberately overdosing on her prescribed meds she now has further damage to contend with.

I also came to the conclusion that I had to be realistic regards where I targeted the programme, some people were going to fall outside the envelope of what I could hope to achieve with a video that was targeting the “middle way” in order to work for as wider audience as possible.

On the more practical side I created some sheets with images on and asked our test group to tell me which best summed up various feelings, the results were surprisingly unambiguous which made my job a lot easier.  We also ran a Survey Monkey aimed at carers in an attempt to get as wider input as possible as they were my secondary audience.

With a better understanding of the task ahead I set myself the goal of the programme working with or without sound, or as just a soundtrack. The idea being that no matter how people learned best I had covered all the bases.

After developing the character we showed short clips to our testers via Speak Out, I didn’t want it to be too real as this might appear threatening, nor did I want to reduce it to cartoons as that I felt that was too abstract and hard to identify with.  I spent a long time refining the eyes, based on feedback from my testers, they said they were too intense so I muted the colour and also the time the character spent looking directly at the viewer, mindful of those on that end of the autistic spectrum.

During development I tried to ensure every aspect of what appeared on screen was correct for the job in hand. I spent a good deal of time looking at many typefaces, I know from my own experience with dyslexia that some fonts are just easier to process, this combined with the right choice of words gave me the best option in terms of reach.

My final choice of font Architect Small Block had all the right characteristics and was developed for its legibility for people with learning disabilities, it has a friendly approachable, handwritten quality to it and compared to similar style fonts ticked all the boxes. There is a very helpful blog by a typographer that I have included in our research that explains why it is so legible.

The last element is the scripting and the voice over, we tested several delivery styles and where we pitched it in terms of simplicity. It is a fine line between sounding patronizing and ensuring that you are not loosing one part of your audience for the sake of another. It took time to fine the right balance, and feedback thus far seems to indicate we are in the right zone.

I have suggested a review in 6 months time when we have a sufficiently wide enough pool of feedback from our target audience to see if there are areas we can improve on. Unlike other commercial projects this is not about creating something that it fun and entertaining…it’s all about engagement and retention, and getting that message across in a sensitive, lucid and gentle manner. I was through out all too well aware of the emotional state of my viewers in dealing with such powerful and emotive subject.

UPDATE 

Very Excited!  Its now October 1st 2015 and I have been invited to present the toolkit at the prestigious Kings College to and audience of LD clinicians at the end of this month, in my terms we are really gaining traction at last and it finally feels real! 

During the pilot phase and after having recieved clinical sign off from the Brighton and Hove Councils LD team we have received nothing but great feedback from all directions including Professors of Learning disabilities,  Lead LD Nurses in the NHS, LD clinicians, WeLDNurses, Dr's, Universities, major charities and the well known voices in suicide prevention here and around the world. 

So after what started as a very personal challenge and a desire to give a little something back the feedback has done a lot to validate my thinking! phew:)  its always scary stepping into other peoples areas of expertise to present your vision for something armed with nothing but a vision and zero qualifications.

The current version is targeted is focused on the UK, there is an affordable option to "customise it so the voice over can be in a more local dialect, or targets a particular community, or even in another language. The same applies to the text and resources. 

We would love you to register your interest especially if you are NHS people (this will help us make the case for it to be made available nationwide). 
As many have observed the tool kit is also a unique way of facilitating important discussions about life events, feelings and fears its not just a public information tool. 

I will be posting some real world experiences of an NHS team in the coming months to show how its been deployed. 

If you want to start using the toolkit or want to know more about it you can contact me via Twitter @Chicustard ...don't ask but I will tell you one day:) 

Or drop me an email jon.bryant@btclick.com

Grassroots Suicide Prevention      http://www.prevent-suicide.org.uk
is the charity behind this, they have also produced an award winning suicide prevention app and one of our next goals is to seek funding to include the LD suicide prevention toolkit with that app.  

Jon Bryant    Creator and Director of the toolkit.

                                                                             Copyright Jon Bryant 2018