World Suicide Prevention Day: the organising team
This year One Team Gov are running two events on the theme of suicide prevention, find out more about why, and what motivates our organising team here.
One Team Gov are running two events for World Suicide Prevention Day, on 19th August and 10th September 2020.
If you’d like to get involved, you can:
1.Sign up for the Mental Health First Aid Breakfast session on 19th August , where we’ll plan the September event and share ideas on how best to promote Suicide Prevention. Link below:
2. Sign up for our event on World Suicide Prevention Day, 10th September. Link below:
‘But who are One Team Gov?’ I hear you ask.
Well you’ve come to the right place. One Team Gov are a group of committed volunteers. We’re a global community, working together to radically reform the public sector through practical action. We’re driven by optimism and the desire to make things better, and united by a set of core principles.
As volunteers of this movement, without remit or responsibility to any single government department or public sector organisation, we can act in a grassroots way, identifying topics that are important to us and supporting others to learn more.
These events came about after Paul (one of our organising team) raised a question at one of our weekly One Team Gov meetups about the importance of suicide prevention and asked One Team Gov to get involved. After a few weeks, and with COVID-19 highlighting the importance of awareness as an issue, Sam took this on and started assembling this team of engaged, passionate One Team Gov-ers — our two events were born.
We are a varied group of mostly Civil Servants but also Local Government, private sector and academia. The theme of suicide cuts across roles and disciplines, of hierarchy or sector, so we believe it’s important that we come together to discuss the issues and learn more about how to support our colleagues.
With that in mind, we wanted to introduce ourselves:
Debbie Blanchard is a Product Manager at the Department for Work and Pensions.
Debbie is a long term OTG-er supporting the One Team Gov Global unconference in 2018, Wellbeing Camp in 2019 and much more; she wants to help to raise awareness about where people can go to receive support if they need it.
Debbie is helping with support across all areas of organisation but especially on communications.
Jon Hyde is a local government Delivery Manager working for Publica.
Jon was keen to get involved as he’s experienced mental health issues over the years and would like others to know that no matter how bad things feel, it’s temporary and things will get better.
Jon is supporting across all areas and also helping with delivery management of the event.
Gail Peck is a Project Manager for HMRC.
Gail is a wellbeing champion and led CS Local’s ‘Team Chaffinch’ creators of the A-Z to Better wellbeing toolkit. Gail was part of the organising team for One Team Gov’s Wellbeing Camp in 2019 and has always advocated for the importance of looking after ourselves, more so after a personal mental health issue. She would like to help raise awareness of suicide prevention and help to create a safe space to talk about an issue that is challenging to talk about for many people, including herself.
Gail is supporting across all areas of organisation but especially supporting charity and civil service network link ups to help us promote the events to a wider and more diverse audience.
Andy Sandford is the founder of We are Lean and Agile — a company that helps organisations make continuous improvements.
Andy has been a manager and team leader in a variety of roles across the public and private sector. During that time he has had to support a number of friends and colleagues through some very challenging times both inside and outside of work with their mental health. As a regular attendee of One Team Gov events he wanted to give something back to the community and to help to support these incredibly valuable events in these challenging times.
At times like these there can be nothing more valuable than supporting the community of people delivering mental health first aid to support us all.
Andy has provided resources such as the online events software, and brings his experience of running platforms for events, to this initiative.
Peter Trussell is a Learning and Development Specialist at the National Leadership Centre in the Cabinet Office.
Peter was a welfare officer at university, trained as a Mental Health First Aider in 2018 and has also managed a number of initiatives on the them of mental health and suicide prevention at his previous employer, Rolls Royce. He is looking forward to putting his skills to good use in the support of this event.
Jenny Vass is the Head of Network and Communities at the National Leadership Centre in the Cabinet Office.
Jenny is another long-term OTG-er and part of the One Team Gov Global Unconference organising team, leading and organising our brilliant volunteers. She got involved because she likes to be helpful and is leading on conversations with policy colleagues working in the area of suicide prevention.
Sam Villis is a Collaboration Lead in the Local Digital Collaboration Unit, at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Sam is another long time One Team Gov volunteer supporting the One Team Gov Global Unconference in 2018 and a number of other events, as well as managing OTG comms. She also organised a week of events as part of Mental Health Awareness Week at the Cabinet Office in 2018. Sam has written about her experiences with anxiety and depression and wants to create a safe space where people feel able to speak openly about their problems.
Paul Vittles is a Research Fellow; a pioneer in the fields of community engagement, participatory democracy, and facilitating transformational change; plus a consultant, coach and counsellor.
Paul has lived experience of suicide, from multiple perspectives, making suicide prevention a personal and professional passion. Paul brings ‘a cool head’ as well as ‘fire in the belly’, along with his proven toolkit for transformational change which he has now adapted for practical, transformational change to move towards zero suicide.
We’re really looking forward to meeting you, and to working with you to help achieve our goal of zero suicides.
If you’d like to get in touch to find out more about wither of our events please email contact@oneteamgov.uk or find us on Twitter @OneTeamGov
