We have another new addition to our team of specialist trainers! We are very proud to introduce Leisa, whose areas of expertise are in self harm, mental health, autism and personality disorders, particularly relating to people with learning disabilities. You can  view Leisa’s profile under  ‘The Team’ heading on our Home page.

We have just heard that we have been re-awarded the contract to deliver our ‘children and young people who self-harm’ course for Lancashire County Council. Having already delivered 25 courses over the last 12 months, we are really looking forward to continuing to work with LCC and their children and young people’s workforce.

If you have personal experience of self-harm and would like to use your experiences to educate and inform others then we would be happy to talk to you to discuss the possibility of you  joining our team of trainers. You would be fully supported and mentored from the onset and a good place to begin would be to get in touch to introduce yourself. We look forward to hearing from you!

In March 2014, Lancashire County Council commissioned us to deliver a series of 15 training courses on the subject of ‘children and young people who self-harm to their children and young people workforce. As a result of the demand for places on this course, we were recommissioned to deliver an additional 10 courses between Sept 2014 and March 2015.

These courses have evaluated really well and we have received some extremely positive feedback from participants who have attended the training which is obviously  very rewarding to us as an organisation and as individual trainers. All of us here at Harm-ed are all really committed to the work we do in promoting awareness and understanding around self-harm with the end goal being for people who self-harm to have a much better experience within the services they access.

We are therefore really excited to have now been asked by Lancashire County Council to conduct an ‘impact assessment’ with participants who attended the initial series of courses. This will entail speaking to participants to find out how the knowledge gained on the course has translated into practice e.g. have there been any changes in practice or service provision regarding the support they offer to children and young people within there service. The results of this survey will be ready in March 2015 so we will be sure to let you know what transpires.

Regan, one of our specialist trainers, speaking about the impact of having experienced over 50 different placements during the time she spent growing up in the care system. If you missed it you can see the interview at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcone

(at 7.38 am) Regan now draws on these experiences when delivering our ‘understanding and responding to self-harm’ courses. Experiential knowledge of self-harm when combined with academic and theoretical knowledge of the issue is one of the many reasons that our training has such a positive impact on the services we work with.

We are pleased to announce the launch of our new course ‘the impact of domestic violence on children and young people’. This course equips participants with the confidence and knowledge to support children and young people who are struggling to deal with the impact of witnessing/experiencing domestic violence. As with all our courses, we would liaise with you to develop the course content so that it fully met the training needs of your service. Learning outcomes are available on request.

Regan, one of our specialist trainers delivered a powerful presentation at the workshop held in Manchester on 16th October 2014. Feedback from the organiser included the comment “I wanted to let you know how AMAZING the session was! It was such a useful, powerful, insightful session Regan delivered and everyone there got a huge amount out of it. It really was, especially considering the time-factor, a very informative and engaging session”.  We are looking forward to further collaborative work with Changing Faces – a truly inspiring organisation.

“I am emailing you from Bristol Crisis Service for Women. As you may know, we’re a national charity which supports girls and women affected by self-harm. (You can view our website here: www.selfinjurysupport.org.uk). My colleague Naomi is currently in the process of developing and setting up a new national helpline service for females who self-injure.

As part of Naomi’s consultation work, she would like to speak to as many people as possible who self-injure, or who work with / support those who do. The survey is confidential and information you provide will only be used to support the set up and running of the helpline and any personal details will not be shared with any other organisations.

The survey can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NationalSHWomensHelpline

Your help is much appreciated.”

Harm-ed are really excited to let you know that this summer’s edition of Asylum; The magazine for democratic psychiatry is now available. This special edition on self-harm came out of a conference in Sept 2012 that harm-ed co-hosted with The University of Central Lancashire and Manchester Metropolitan University. It was an an amazing day and one that harm-ed was really proud to be such an integral part of.  In this edition you can read the presentations of the various contributors, including harm-ed’s Terri Shaw and the journal can be accessed by visiting www.asylumonline.net/

We recently delivered training for MIND in Wales and here is the feedback from the manager ” I have had glowing feedback from staff on this training and I am pleased to hear that engagement and participation was good.  Thank you for providing us with an excellent example of training that is relevant and of benefit to staff.  We will be passing on recommendation to others” (June 2013)