This is the first time I’ve contributed to the LifeSIGNS blog, and there’s certainly been a lot going on over the past few days to make my first entry an interesting one!

On Wednesday Wedge and I travelled to London to attend Everybody Hurts, a conference on self-injury organised by the Newham Asian Women’s Project (NAWP) at the Barbican Centre. NAWP were celebrating the launch of their report on self-injury, Painful Secrets, and a DVD produced by young people based on their own personal experiences of it.

The conference began with an introduction to Painful Secrets and a summary of their main findings, focusing especially on whether there were differences between the issues affecting young South Asian women and their non-Asian counterparts, and explored the cultural issues which many young South Asian women identify as one of the causes of their emotional distress which leads them to self-injure.

The report really forced home the point that we all need to be more aware of the effects of equality and diversity in our treatment of the issue – and luckily LifeSIGNS is ahead of the game on this, as Janet is specifically working hard to ensure that the services provided by LifeSIGNS are accessible to black and minority ethnic groups.

The DVD NAWP have produced is not quite finished, but we were shown a sneak preview. It features young members of NAWP who act out the words of other members who have personal experience of self-injury. I think it’s fair to say that both Wedge and I were very impressed by the DVD – it was so refreshing to see a non-sensationalised and heartfelt account of the issue. The fact that the whole thing was produced by young people themselves makes the achievement even more remarkable – I’m looking forward to seeing the full film!

Wedge and I had been asked to facilitate two roundtable discussions in the afternoon (in conjunction with three representatives from the Mental Health Foundation) on the relationships between self-injury and the media. The discussions went very well and raised some very interesting ideas about how reporting on the issue could be improved. NAWP are writing up the minutes so I’ll blog the recommendations that were made when I have them.

I was so impressed by the conference as a whole and the work that NAWP had done on self-injury. There were many representatives of all kinds of organisations affected by self-injury all over the UK at the conference, and we had plenty of opportunity to make invaluable contacts and spread the word about LifeSIGNS.

The next day Wedge and I both headed off to Derby bright and early to deliver some training at the Royal School for the Deaf. Wedge, Sarah, and I have been working away behind the scenes for months now updating and expanding the training packages that LifeSIGNS can deliver, and this was the first time we tested some of our new material! I was also my first experience of training for LifeSIGNS, so I was keen to make sure everything went well.

The whole experience was fantastic, and a real eye-opener. As many of the staff at the school are profoundly deaf we were working with interpreters who stood beside us to interpret what we were saying into British Sign Language (BSL), which was a very new experience for both of us but worked perfectly. And the new training package was a success!

The training sessions we delivered went very well and we received some very positive feedback; it’s always nice to know that the people we’ve been talking to have been genuinely impressed by what LifeSIGNS does and have taken a lot away from the event. Many people came up to us after the talks and mentioned how much they had valued what we had said. At the same time I think both Wedge and I learned a lot ourselves, and gained some valuable insight into the relationship between deaf culture and self-injury.

On a side note, we’re finding that our training services are becoming increasingly popular, and we are hoping to recruit some new trainers in the not-too-distant future! If you’re interested, watch this space…

After such a hectic few days I’m now totally exhausted and am giving myself the weekend off!

Nick

Back to LifeSIGNS, Self Injury Guidance & Network Support