Breaking the silence: Making suicide prevention training accessible to all

The Social Service Sector Strategic Roadmap (4ST) is the National Council of Social Service’s (NCSS) guide for empowering individuals, strengthening communities and fostering a more caring and inclusive society. It comprises four strategic thrusts that provide actionable steps and best practices for stakeholders to drive organisational growth and sector-wide impact.

With a S$10,000 grant from the NCSS 4ST Partnership Fund, Equal Dreams conducted a series of suicide awareness workshops for individuals with special needs. According to Equal Dreams, by expanding suicide alertness knowledge, society moves closer to becoming a suicide-safer community. Read on to find out more.

When equipped with the right skills, individuals with disabilities are better prepared to recognise.

When social enterprise Equal Dreams and social worker-educator Ms Cheng Hwee Fern set out to conduct suicide awareness workshops for people with disabilities, they faced a delicate challenge: How to discuss suicide in a way that was sensitive, inclusive and accessible, such as in sign language, for participants?

To address this, Equal Dreams – which provides consultancy and training for disability inclusion and accessibility – worked with interpreters for the deaf community to develop sign vocabulary that was “concise, meaningful and non-triggering or insensitive”, said Mr Hidayat Khalid, team lead at Equal Dreams.

“Hearing and deaf interpreters followed the standard interpretation process by analysing the content in English before accurately interpreting it into Singapore Sign Language,” Mr Hidayat explained. “For these workshops, the interpretation process was handled with particular care, considering the sensitivity of the topic and the existing vocabulary and discourses around suicide within the community.”

Working together to conduct a series of suicide awareness workshops for people with special needs.

Beyond sign language considerations, the team took additional steps to make the workshops more accessible. This included visual descriptions of videos and slides for participants with visual impairments, dedicated calm spaces for neurodivergent participants, and speech-to-text interpretation for learners of all needs. These efforts were guided by Equal Dreams’ network of access specialists.

With a S$10,000 grant from the National Council of Social Service’s (NCSS) 4ST Partnership Fund, Equal Dreams and Ms Cheng conducted a series of three safeTALK workshops, equipping participants with essential skills to recognise and respond to signs of suicide. The 4ST Partnership Fund encourages collaboration and supports solutions co-developed by more than one organisation, whether they are social service agencies (SSAs), social enterprises or ground-up groups.

Each of the workshops adhered to universal design principles, ensuring accessibility for all.

Mental Health for All

The idea for these workshops first came about during a conversation between Ms Cheng and Equal Dreams founder Nix Sang, where they realised suicide awareness education was not readily accessible to people with disabilities. Recognising the need for more inclusive training, they decided to pool their expertise.

“Without access to these programmes, disability communities remain an untapped resource for supporting society,” Mr Hidayat shared. “When equipped with the right skills, disabled individuals can recognise suicide warning signs – especially as they may appear differently in disabled people – and offer support to both their communities and non-disabled individuals facing similar struggles.”

Ms Cheng, who runs ConnectCreate, said that many people are impacted by suicide, but fear often holds them back from getting involved or talking about it. “For people with disabilities, there’s an added burden – training must first be made accessible to them,” she added. “This drove me to collaborate with Equal Dreams and ensure this training is available to more communities.”

The safeTALK workshops trained participants to recognise signs of suicidal thoughts and take action. Through a mix of presentations, guided discussions and skills practice, attendees learned how to respond effectively to someone in need. To ensure a supportive learning environment, each session included a community support person, who provided emotional reassurance as participants navigated a sensitive subject.

Each workshop featured a community support person, who offered emotional reassurance.

Each of the three workshops was designed to cater to a specific community: The deaf community, the low-vision community and people who are neurodivergent, such as those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or on the autism spectrum.

Accessibility was a top priority, and many adaptations followed the principles of universal design – ensuring that spaces or resources can be accessed and used by all people, regardless of degrees of ability and disability. For example, participants were provided with a visual checklist to track the progress of the programme, while speech-to-text interpretation was displayed on a screen.

One of the greater challenges was identifying suitable community support persons, as they needed both lived experience within the community and prior training in suicide intervention.

“Suicide is a deeply personal topic,” Ms Cheng explained. “At the same time, each community can be quite small so participants may already know one another. This can make it harder for an individual to open up.”

Despite the challenges, the effort to customise each workshop for the communities paid off. Mr Hidayat said: “The workshops sparked meaningful discussions on how the experience of suicide might manifest differently within each community. For example, a neurodivergent individual might express distress in ways that a neurotypical person might overlook. These conversations are critical in ensuring support is truly inclusive.”

Joining Forces to Succeed as a Community

Although Ms Cheng spent over eight years at the Samaritans of Singapore and trained in suicide intervention under LivingWorks Education, a global provider of suicide prevention skills, the partnership with Equal Dreams gave her a deeper understanding of the barriers people with disabilities face in accessing mental health support.

“I was able to appreciate how much work goes into providing accessibility and how much more could be achieved if society embraced universal design,” she said. “If not for this partnership, I would not have been able to reach so many members of the community.”

Reflecting on the impact of their partnership, Ms Cheng and Mr Hidayat said they hope to work with other training providers to expand accessible suicide prevention and intervention training programmes to other communities.

“Imagine if someone sees a trainer from their own community,” said Ms Cheng. “That trust and motivation to learn more about suicide prevention would be that much stronger.”

Learn more about NCSS Social Service Sector Strategic Roadmap (4ST) and find out how you can become a partner in the social service ecosystem.