With The Charter's list of signatories growing daily, the Life in Mind team consulted a selection of suicide prevention and mental health experts to fulfil roles as Life in Mind Champions who provided expert leadership and support around the operationalisation of The Charter.
The Life In Mind team reached out to one of The Charter Champions, Suicide Prevention Australia to learn more about why they signed The Charter and how they will be operationalising it within their organisation.
1. Why did the Suicide Prevention Australia sign The Charter?
As the peak body who provides national leadership for the suicide prevention sector in Australia, Suicide Prevention Australia (SPA) exists to support, drive collaboration and advocate on behalf of its members.
SPA believes that through collaborative effort and shared purpose, we can achieve our shared vision of a world without suicide.
The Charter serves as a formal commitment to working together and developing better structures and processes for collaboration and SPA stands in total alignment with that commitment and purpose.
2. Explain how being a Communications Charter Champion is important to you?
Both SPA CEO Nieves Murray, and SPA Director of Membership and Community Engagement Jonathan Leeming are proud Champions of The Charter as it reflects our shared commitment at a personal level, as well as an organisational one.
3. As a peak body how would you embed The Charter into your organisation?
As a member-based peak body, SPA is uniquely positioned to serve as an advocate for The Charter to the suicide prevention sector and the organisation is currently in the process of strongly encouraging all of our 180+ members to be signatories.
In 2019 SPA will be investigating other ways in which The Charter can be embedded in and disseminated in the areas of communications, messaging and policy.
SPA welcomes this important document as an opportunity for the mental health and suicide prevention sectors to work collaboratively together to help prevent mental illness and suicide.
Read more about The Charter
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