The Crisis Centre provides educational workshops aimed at building suicide-safer communities.  Our training includes skills training, healthy coping, communication, peer support, and education to prevent and respond to crisis and suicide.

We collaborate with and support agencies, front-line workers, social workers, first responders, education providers, industry, and the general public to develop an approach to suicide prevention.

 Crisis Centre 15+ & Adult Workshops

suicideTALK  

Ranging from 90 minutes to half a day, Living Works’ suicideTALK invites all participants—regardless of prior training or experience—to become more aware of suicide prevention opportunities in their community. Dealing openly with the stigma around suicide, this exploration focuses on the question "Should we talk about suicide?" By looking at this question in a number of different ways, session members can discover some of the beliefs and ideas about suicide in their communities—and in themselves. suicideTALK participants learn:

• How suicide is a serious community health problem that is often misunderstood
• How personal and community beliefs about suicide affect suicide stigma and safety
• How the steps taught in LivingWorks’ safeTALK program can be used to help prevent suicide
• How to get involved in life protection, preservation, and promotion activities in the community

Safe (Suicide Awareness For Everyone) TALK

Living Works’ three-hour workshop which prepares helpers to identify persons with thoughts of suicide and connect them to suicide first-aid resources.  Most people with thoughts of suicide, either directly or indirectly, invite help to stay safe.  Alert helpers know how to identify and work with these opportunities to help protect life.  Powerful videos illustrate both non-alert and alert responses.  Discussion and practice stimulate learning.  By the end of the training, participants will be better able to:

• Move beyond common tendencies to miss, dismiss or avoid suicide. 
• Identify people who have thoughts of suicide
• Apply the TALK steps (Tell, Ask, Listen and Keep Safe) to connect a person with thoughts of suicide to a suicide first-aid intervention caregiver.

ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training)

Living Works’ two-day, interactive workshop that prepares caregivers to provide suicide life-assisting first-aid intervention.  This workshop is open to all caregivers, formally designated or not; adults and youth 16 plus. By the end of this workshop, participants will be better able to:

• Identify people who have thoughts of suicide
• Understand how beliefs and attitudes can affect suicide interventions
• Understand a person who is thinking about suicide’s story about suicide
• Recognize turning points that connect the person to life
• Conduct a safety assessment and develop a plan that will keep the person thinking about suicide safe for now
• Confirm the person thinking about suicide’s commitment to the safe-plan and their intent to follow it through.

Crisis Communication Skills for Peer Support

A three-hour workshop that teaches valuable communication skills to use when dealing with a person in crisis.  This workshop uses the ADEPT Model, which outlines five important phases of active listening that are necessary to de-escalate an emotional situation. Participants will learn to avoid common pitfalls such as fixing, rescuing, and advice giving but rather to use communication that is empowering and respectful of a person’s self-determination regarding their own crisis situation.  Anyone who deals with people can benefit from becoming more empathic! This workshop can be modified to suit various groups such as students, people in helping professions, or supervisors/managers.

Crisis Centre Youth Workshops

COPE 

COPE uses the principals of mindfulness to help students in grades 5,6, & 7 achieve better mental wellness and cope with issues like anxiety, overthinking, stress, sleep loss, and social media use – all things that recent research tells us can contribute to mental health issues and suicide ideation.

COPE will be taught in 4, 45-minute sessions and will cover:

Communication: Talking with a safe adult about our struggles or the things we worry about helps us COPE. What does it mean to COPE?  Becoming aware of how we speak to ourselves and the ways we think about ourselves can teach us how to be our own best friend. How to communicate our feelings through art/poetry/journaling/culture. What it means to have someone listen. What a safe adult is. What it would look like if they called, chatted with, or texted the crisis line.

Options: What are options? What does it mean to have options? Exploring internal and external options. Mindfulness, self-care, self-compassion.

Perspective: Tools for handling overthinking, worry, and anxiety. Helping students learn how to put things back into perspective for themselves and see the gifts in difficult times. Helping learners understand their own strength and resilience.

Enjoy Life: Session about balance and finding a sense of calm or peacefulness even when we’re going through a hard time. Creating intentional happiness. Students will identify things that contribute to their personal happiness.

Lifelines

Lifelines is an evidence-based program for Grades 5,6, & 7 designed to integrate youth suicide prevention into both the culture and mission of the school, which is to provide a safe learning environment for its students. Classes emphasize help-seeking behaviours and are aimed at students who encounter peers who may be thinking of suicide.

Objectives of the workshop:

• To review relevant facts about suicide, including warning signs;
• To outline a process of identifying how to recognize the threat of thoughts about suicide and behaviour and to take peers seriously;
• To model positive attitudes about intervention and help-seeking behaviours;
• To identify resources, including one helpful adult, and to know how resources will respond.

Lifelines will be taught in 4, 60-minute sessions and will cover:

Session 1 – Suicide Isn’t Silly: Children (and adults) have a tendency to make fun of things that frighten or scare them. This first session sets the foundation for continuing classroom discussions of suicide by acknowledging the anxiety that may come with these lessons. Basic information about suicide is reviewed by engaging the students in discussion and by clarifying myths and misinformation.

Session 2 – Friends Help Friends: The second session begins to present the dilemma of knowing something is not right with a friend but not knowing what to do about it. Focusing on helping a friend rather than going for help for oneself is designed to open up the topic of help-seeking in a nonthreatening way.

Session 3 – Asking for Help Takes Courage: Builds on the theme of help-seeking behaviours and redefines asking for help as a character strength rather than a weakness. Participants also identify caring behaviours and the characteristics of helpful people.

Session 4 – Practicing What We’ve Learned: Video scenes presented acknowledge that asking for help for a friend might not be easy but demonstrate the benefits of doing so. The session concludes by asking participants to sign a help-seeking pledge and name at least one trusted adult.

Self-Care 101

60-minute workshop about mental health awareness and coping for Grades 8-12

A central goal of this workshop is to invite youth to see that each of us has mental health and, similar to caring for our physical health, we can learn to nurture and improve our mental health through our actions, experiences, and lifestyle choices.

Objectives of the workshop:

• Explore what mental health is;
• Understand mental health is a dynamic part of well-being that exists on a spectrum;
• Normalize mental health as similar to physical health: it can improve or decline, requires maintenance, and sometimes requires professional or outside help;
• Brainstorm actions we can take to support our mental health called ‘self-care strategies’;
• Understand doing self-care effectively requires taking time for self, is not selfish, and gets easier with experience and practice;
• Understand that all self-care strategies have potential limitations: why and how much we do something can make it supportive or limiting;
• Validate and normalize reaching out to safe, trusted adults and community resources for outside support for ourselves or our friends or loved ones.

Reaching Out

60-minute workshop about suicide awareness for Grades 8-12

This workshop introduces the topic of suicide to youth and discusses the basics of warning signs, how to ask someone about suicide, and talk to someone who is thinking about suicide.

Objectives of the workshops:

• Ensure participants learn information about suicide and stopping pain.
• Teach and discuss warning signs that indicate that someone may be thinking about suicide. 
• Teach participants ways they can respond to a potential suicide, it is okay to talk about suicide.
• Teach about resources available and let participants know that it is okay to ask for and give help.

GRASP

12-hour skill-building program that provides youth from Grades 9 to 12 with self-awareness, communication, and coping skills that will aid them in their personal and professional growth as well as contribute to an overall plan for ongoing youth suicide prevention programs within the school district.

Student Curriculum: GRASP: Growth, Resilience, Acknowledgement, Suicide Awareness, Prevention and Personal Planning

Lesson 1: Listening, acknowledging, and validating (Growth)

Lesson 2: Tools for coping, finding our strengths, tools for helping others (Growth, Resilience)

Lesson 3: Healthy and unhealthy behaviors, how and when to set a boundary, introduction to suicide prevention (Resilience, Acknowledgement, Suicide Awareness)

Lesson 4: Suicide Prevention, Community resources, Crisis line and school Counselling, helping peers who are struggling, Coping Cards and Safe Planning (suicide awareness, prevention, and planning)

Young people often turn to their peers in times of difficulty and are aware of school dynamics about which school staff may not be cognizant. GRASP was developed as a Peer Gatekeeper training program to provide youth with the skills needed to recognize and identify students who are struggling and where they can turn to for help.

GRASP was designed to the boost self-confidence, problem solving, community resource knowledge, knowledge of school district protocols, critical thinking, awareness of personal biases, resilience, suicide awareness and response in students selected to take the program.

Through a series of games, interactive discussion, group activity, written work, and role play, youth learn:

• Active listening skills
• The impact of social and cultural biases on listening and helping
• Why difficult situations can be turning points for the better
• The power of our choices
• How to respectfully communicate in an open and direct manner
• The differences between healthy and unhealthy relationships
• How to recognize manipulation
• When to set boundaries
• How to set boundaries
• Coping with crisis
• Suicide awareness, the importance of reaching out, and never keeping suicide a secret
• Community resource information.