Work Package 2: The role of community-based and peer-led services in creating and sustaining liveable lives
WP2 builds on and expands relationships from previous research projects Suicide Cultures: Reimagining Suicide Research and Suicide In/As Politics. This work package responds to the limited impact and reach of clinically focused interventions for suicide. It aims to significantly expand our understanding of community-based and peer-led practices in relation to suicide and ‘liveability’. While it focuses on UK-based organisations, WP2 will contribute to growing the global evidence base for community and peer-led support for those at risk of or living with suicidality.
WP2 Research Questions are:
- What practices of care, collaboration, support and suicide prevention or liveability are present in different peer-led and community-based services?
- Who is missing, and what barriers and boundaries are present?
- How far do these services positively disrupt hierarchies of liveable lives that are present in policy and practice?
- What forms of good practice in peer-led and community-based support can be identified, that effectively support service users/clients/community-members in enhancing ‘liveability’?
WP2 Activities
Meta-ethnography: Researchers will undertake a rigorous review of existing research about community-led and peer-led suicide related services and/or interventions.
6 Long-term Ethnographies: This is the core activity of WP2 and will involve different researchers spending an extended period in/with community-based services that support those ‘at risk’ of suicide. During their time at these organisations, the team will learn more about how care and support are provided and experienced in different settings/communities and will work collaboratively with services to generate rich, qualitative evidence to improve service provision and evidence efficacy to support calls for sustained funding. These ethnographies will be split between England and Scotland with at least one in each nation being a) peer-led; b) focused on supporting refugee, migrant, black and minority ethnic communities who have been largely unrepresented in suicide research in the UK.