UK-first, award winning Breaking the Silence Programme
David Riddell Memorial CIO is delighted to provide funding to Grassroots Suicide Prevention to support the development of its Breaking The Silence programme - a pioneering, quality-assured training course aimed at young people aged 14 and above. (Resources are free for teachers to download on the Grassroots Suicide Prevention website).
Co-produced and piloted alongside youth, academics, educators, and mental health professionals, it consists of two engaging one-hour workshops designed to teach teens how to recognise the warning signs of suicidal distress in peers, respond appropriately, guide them to support, and know when to escalate serious concerns to an adult.
Launched in 2024 as the UK’s first quality-assured suicide prevention training for young people, the programme has already been delivered to around 1,000 Year 10 students, equipping them with practical, life-saving skills in a peer-to-peer format.
About Grassroots Suicide Prevention
Grassroots Suicide Prevention‘s vision is a future where more lives are saved from suicide, and their mission is to empower people to help save lives through connecting, educating, and campaigning.
Training with Grassroots Suicide Prevention: Grassroots Suicide Prevention’s training teaches the knowledge, skills and confidence needed to support those at risk of suicide. They work with organisations across the UK to deliver their life-saving training in suicide prevention, postvention (for people bereaved by suicide), mental health and self-harm – to date they’ve trained over 70,000 people.
Stay Alive app: Grassroots Suicide Prevention has developed the NHS-endorsed, confidential, award-winning Stay Alive app, which is free for all to use if concerned about yourself or others – a suicide prevention resource full of over 800 tools and resources, in 22 languages, to help people stay safe from suicide.
Double Award Win for Breaking the Silence
Grassroots Suicide Prevention, in partnership with NICE Media, also won two prestigious national awards at the Learning Excellence Awards 2025 for the Breaking the Silence initiative.
The programme was named as Sector Winner for ‘Learning in Education’
It also received the coveted Gold Award for ‘Outstanding Course or Initiative – External’.
Visit the Grassroots Suicide Prevention website or email training@prevent-suicide.org.uk for further information.
Feedback
Here is some recent feedback on the workshops from a school in Manchester:
Deputy Head: ‘That was the best piece of external training/work with young people I have seen in my teaching career. I was moved beyond measure and so proud of the pupils in the workshop. I feel privileged to have been there, even just for one lesson. It did not surprise me at all to find out that the trainer is a former teacher. Watching her work with our pupils for an hour was the best teacher training I have ever received.’
Head of Prefects - ‘Our School Officers and Wellbeing prefects went away from these outstanding sessions far more confident in their ability to recognise signs a peer may be thinking of suicide, and with clear advice on how to act in the prevention of suicide. The trainer was a brilliantly engaging session leader, and had our students hanging on her every word, while allowing them to safely discuss their own ideas and feelings around the topic. For the pupils, the high-quality resources produced by Grassroots felt genuine, and wholly relevant to their lives. From a teaching perspective, the resources are accessible and straightforward to use, with an exceptional amount of helpful guidance. There has clearly been so much care and thought put into how to deliver lessons on the subject, and we cannot thank the trainer enough.’