Suicide Prevention Scotland is committed to ensuring that the Scottish Government’s suicide prevention strategy and action plan is informed in equal weight by lived experience and academic research.
A national Suicide Prevention Lived Experience Panel was established in 2018 to realise the aim of putting lived experience at the heart of suicide prevention work in Scotland. Scottish Action Mental Health (SAMH) hosts the National Suicide Prevention Lived Experience Panel; which is comprised of a diverse group of 17 people with lived and living experience of suicide. This Oral Communication will share key elements of the rich learning and improvement recommendations from the independent evaluation of Scotland’s national Lived Experience Panel, carried out by the research company. The Lines Between in 2022. We will highlight the fundamental principles of meaningful participation for people with lived experience of suicide and bring to the forefront insights gathered from Panel members and key stakeholders around the positive benefits of Panel membership, barriers to participation and the challenges of embedding a compassionate approach to involving people with lived experience. Specifically, the presentation will focus on key themes:
Recruitment of Panel Membership – criteria for membership that enables safe participation and challenges around robust and safe recruitment.
Agreeing outcomes and setting expectations – build capacity, confidence and understanding of Panel members around programme outcomes, ensuring Panel activities are aligned and expectations are managed.
Methods of engagement and deliberation – the benefits of relational, non-polemical, dialogic methods of sharing lived experiences and high quality deliberative engagement.
Recruitment of designated Lived Experience Coordinators – The importance of trauma- informed designated staff with clearly defined roles to manage Panel membership, liaise with stakeholders and implement safeguarding protocols.
Feedback cycle – effective feedback mechanisms to the Panel and partner stakeholders and how to avoid tokenistic participation.
Emotional support and safeguarding – key ingredients of the scaffolding of support around lived experience members before, during and after engagement sessions. Weaving good self-care and positive well-being into the work programme; developing guidelines that record roles, responsibilities and boundaries for Panel members, Co-ordinators and other stakeholders.