About LivingWorks

We are LivingWorks Education

• We are the suicide intervention training company.
• We believe suicide can be prevented and communities made suicide-safer.
• We have been leaders in this field for over twenty-five years.
• We design, develop and deliver programs of the highest quality.
• We have programs for everyone who wants to help.
• LivingWorks' programs help helpers save lives.
• We bring hope to helpers.
• Our standardized programs can be tailored to your community.
• We train local trainers to conduct the programs.
• You can count on us for continuing support.

Who LivingWorks Is...

We are the suicide intervention training company.

Based upon current knowledge, we believe suicide intervention should be a major part of every community’s suicide prevention strategy. A one-on-one relationship between a person at risk and a competent helper represents a unique opportunity of effecting a lifesaving or life-altering change. We train community helpers of all kinds to work in this intervention context.

We are a private, for-profit, corporation, employing all of the financial discipline, innovation and determination of any private sector business to achieve our mission. This business foundation allows us to develop collaborative partnerships with private and public organizations around the world without compromising our training standards.

We believe suicide can be prevented and communities made suicide-safer.

While preventing all suicides might not be possible, we believe that many suicides could be prevented. Interventions that save one life at a time contribute to fewer suicides in a community as a whole.

We regard a community as any group of people who think of themselves as a community and, as such, communities are organizations, institutions, geographical areas and other kinds of affiliations. Since people live in communities, suicide is always a possibility. We believe communities can be made far safer from suicide. We contribute by preparing helpers to help the people at risk who live in those communities.

We have been leaders in this field for over twenty-five years.

The developers are a multidisciplinary team that includes education, medicine, nursing, psychiatry, psychology, social work and spiritual perspectives. They have been and continue to be connected with and contributing to the international community of suicide prevention knowledge.

LivingWorks is also a community. In addition to the developers, there are both educational and organizational support staff, stakeholders of many descriptions and thousands of trainers of diverse backgrounds in many countries. In many important ways, "we" refers to all of this community.

What LivingWorks Does...

We design, develop and deliver programs of the highest quality.

We are guided by a social Research and Development method that helps us translate knowledge about suicide prevention into fully evolved programs capable of widespread dissemination, with fidelity. These programs incorporate the current literature on suicide prevention. They also reflect our ongoing guidance from participants and other stakeholders.

Our programs pay as much attention to learning processes as learning content. With suicide being a topic still punctuated with stigma and fear, how one learns can be as important as what one learns. We regard this principle as so important that attention to helper attitudes and experiences are a signature feature of any LivingWorks program.

We have programs for everyone who wants to help.

Our programs are comprehensive, coordinated and integrated. Their core learning processes give them all a similar "feel." They teach the same basic messages but at varying levels of complexity. Together they can meet the intervention training needs of all helpers in a community.

The range of programs is sensitive to different entry-level needs. Some programs are universal, for everyone. Helpers with more specialized needs can enter the suite of programs at several places. There are programs to suit the skills and knowledge of all types of helpers.

LivingWorks’ programs help helpers save lives.

Our programs emphasize collaborative suicide-specific skills and helping processes. We help helpers work with persons at risk of suicide to prevent suicidal behaviors. Our programs save lives because they teach helpers how to build upon the life potential residing in almost everyone at risk of suicide.

Knowledge of what to do, while necessary, is not sufficient to create competence. Successful practice is needed. Willing, ready and able helpers are hopeful. They know what to do and they know that they can do it.

We bring hope to helpers…

Hope about preventing suicide is a recurrent theme in our training. We acknowledge the motivation it may take to want to learn more about suicide. We believe anyone can have thoughts of suicide, including trainers and helpers. We openly validate personal experiences with suicide as a source of learning. Hopes are nourished throughout each program by a careful balance of safety and challenge. Safety encourages risk-taking and leads to success in meeting challenges; challenges that are successfully met encourage confidence, greater safety and more learning.

Our main intervention program is the most widely used and most evaluated gatekeepertraining program in the world. Experts, trainers, participants and receivers of help all agree that lives are saved. Although worthwhile, using a traditional scientific method to confirm that program’s positive impact on whole communities would be very expensive. Expert judgment, best practice reviews, program evaluations, anecdotal evidence and evidence from alternative research methods confirms our programs’ value. We are proud of the millions of more skilled suicide interventions done by those who we have trained.

How LivingWorks Does It...

Our standardized programs can be tailored to your community.

Our programs are fully supported with field-tested and regularly updated trainer and participant materials. Using these standardized materials allows economies of scale and fidelity of delivery but it is possible to tailor our programs to any community fairly easily.

Our standard programs have worked in many different types of communities. We present the universal fundamentals of suicide helping that do not change from community to community. Our trainers know how to integrate local issues. Translation and adaptation to encourage a sense of familiarity can be done fairly inexpensively.

We train local trainers to conduct the programs.

We invest in developing local resources. Rather than fly-in/fly-out experts who are expensive and go away, we train local trainers. This has two positive effects. It costs less in the long run and it reinforces the message that local resources have the capacity to help.

In addition, local trainers and organizers often become suicide prevention leaders in the community. Being linked to LivingWorks empowers them to take on additional coordination and development responsibilities. Investing in local resources is the ultimate in cost-effectiveness.

You can count on us for continuing support.

We have not just been around for a long time. We have been around a long time with the same customers. In addition to our training, we provide ongoing consultation and support on a wide range of suicide prevention issues.
We do not foster dependence. We work with communities. We have expertise but so do the people in any community. Collaboration pools wisdom. Almost any other process causes some of that wisdom to be lost. We believe it takes all of us working together to make communities suicide safer. We are dependably supportive. Talk to people who work with us.