Carers Leeds is committed to supporting carers in crisis and continually improving the knowledge and skills of our staff. Our latest initiative is focused on suicide prevention. We know that more than 40% of parent carers – and up to 20% of other unpaid carers – have thought about suicide, but most don’t feel safe to share their thoughts or seek help.  We want to ensure that Carers Leeds staff have the knowledge, skills, and resources to support carers who are contemplating suicide and get them the help they need. To do that we’re developing knew training for our staff and we’d like your input.

We’ll be hosting a workshop on 23 January from 10am to 12.30pm. The workshop will be hosted by Associate Professor Siobhan O’Dwyer (University of Birmingham) and will be a chance to share your thoughts on how staff at Carer Leeds could strengthen the work they do.

You don’t need to have experienced suicidal thoughts to attend, because we are interested in the perspective of all carers. If you have experienced suicidal thoughts, it’s important to note that this is not a counselling session. Although we will have people on hand to provide support if anything in the session is triggering, the focus of the workshop is on using your experiences to help us improve the way we support carers.

The event will be hosted at a city centre location and we will notify you closer to the date.

If you’d like to attend, please email Kathleen.Hart@carersleeds.org.uk or call 0113 2468338