National Suicide Prevention Strategy project - Building Bridges Report: knowledge sharing between men's groups and the family well being empowerment program: their role in community-based suicide prevention strategies

Australia’s National Suicide Prevention Strategy (NSPS), now in place for a decade, supports community based initiatives aimed at enhancing the capacity of individuals and services to provide support and training on suicide prevention and increasing the number of individuals seeking help regarding their emotional and social wellbeing. This report discusses one community based initiative, Learning from the Experts: Building Bridges (Building Bridges), which extended a set of community based suicide prevention strategies, developed following a cluster of suicides in Yarrabah, across three other communities.\ud \ud The aim of the Building Bridges was to establish sustainable community-based approaches to building resilience, reducing suicide risk exposure and reducing self-harm in Indigenous communities by drawing on the experience, skills and knowledge of one community. To this end, several suicide prevention strategies developed within Yarrabah (a DOGIT community) following a cluster of suicides in the 1990s were expanded to three other sites using ‘knowledge sharing’ to frame a variety of community based activities. These activities drew on empowerment processes which have developed at Yarrabah in response to the issue of suicide: the Yaba Bimbie Men’s Group, the Family Well Being Empowerment program and the Life Promotion Officer project. Knowledge sharing based on these empowerment processes across communities occurred through meetings, workshops, training and social networking, with each community hosting at least one knowledge sharing event as well as broader regional men’s forums in South west Queensland (Dalby) and far North Queensland (Cairns) towards the end of the project. Innovative IT/multi-media programs were integrated as a complementary strategy.\ud \ud The empowerment strategies familiar to Yarrabah were shared via partner organizations in two Cape York DOGIT communities (Hope Vale and Kowanyama) and in one rural setting in Southwest Queensland (Dalby). Target communities were to be supported to build capacity to define and implement recovery and suicide prevention activities. The overall aim of the project was to assist these communities to identify local priorities and build local capacity relevant to community and individual resilience, reducing suicide risk exposure and reducing self-harm in Indigenous communities