Glasgow widens training
- Glasgow’s Health and Social Care Partnership expanded suicide‑prevention training to include frontline services beyond clinicians. - The expansion explicitly adds nonclinical frontline roles to the training roster. - The move frames first‑response competence as a bounded, teachable skill set that frontline adults can hold until clinical handoff (glasgowtimes.co.uk).
Glasgow’s Health and Social Care Partnership is widening suicide-prevention training beyond clinicians and into frontline services across the city. (glasgowcity.hscp.scot) The Glasgow City Suicide Prevention Partnership said on February 23, 2026 that recent work included expanding training across frontline services, alongside citywide awareness campaigns. The partnership said it ran 52 training courses in 2025 with 920 attendees. (glasgowcity.hscp.scot) Those courses are suicideTALK, safeTALK and ASIST, a tiered set of programs used in Scotland to teach suicide awareness and intervention skills. Public Health Scotland says safeTALK is a half-day course on spotting risk and connecting someone to help, while ASIST is a two-day workshop on intervening and building a safety plan. (glasgowcity.hscp.scot) (publichealthscotland.scot) The shift fits a wider Scottish model that treats suicide prevention as a workforce skill, not only a specialist clinical task. NHS Education for Scotland says its mental health and suicide prevention framework covers workers across health, social care, voluntary and public services, with practice levels based on role and context rather than seniority. (nes.scot.nhs.uk) The timing also lines up with Scotland’s new national suicide-prevention action plan. The Scottish Government and COSLA launched the 2026-2029 “Creating Hope Together” plan on January 22, 2026, and Glasgow said its local work is being aligned with those priorities. (glasgowcity.hscp.scot) Glasgow had already been scaling the training before this latest push. The partnership said it delivered 51 courses to 815 attendees in 2023, then 81 courses to 1,333 staff in 2024, and also introduced suicide-bereavement training that year for people supporting those affected by a suicide death. (glasgowcity.hscp.scot) Trevor Lakey, chair of the Glasgow City Suicide Prevention Partnership, said the goal is to build “confidence and skills” across workforce and volunteer networks so support can be offered earlier. Glasgow’s framing is that more adults in trusted frontline roles should be able to recognize distress, start a direct conversation and hold the situation until specialist help takes over. (glasgowcity.hscp.scot)
