UK2022
Raising Suicide Awareness Across the Country
One Step at a Time
The Story So Far
In 2021 we walked over 300 miles in memory of our daughters, Sophie, Beth and Emily, who all took their own lives. We walked to raise awareness of talking about suicide prevention and the work of PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Suicide.
Our walk had significantly more impact than we could ever have imagined; our initial target was to raise £3,000 each for the charity, we actually raised over £800,000. More importantly the high profile we (unexpectedly) gained encouraged people across the UK to talk openly about suicide and suicide prevention. Ged Flynn (CEO of PAPYRUS) said that we had “changed the landscape of suicide awareness”.
We are proud of what we achieved, the feedback we have received from the charity and many individuals who reached out to us shows that we have made a real difference. PAPYRUS is accelerating its plans to take HOPELINEUK 24/7 and is bringing forward the opening of more offices to give better nationwide coverage; more people will receive training in suicide awareness and suicide prevention – more lives will be saved.
We know that many people reached out to PAPYRUS for help and training, many of whom referenced 3 Dads Walking. Parents have also thanked us because seeing us on the walk and listening to our stories allowed them to have safe conversations with their children about suicide and mental health issues. These open and frank conversations will also save lives.
The 2022 Walk - The UK
With all this happening why go for another walk?
We want to continue to highlight the fact that suicide is the biggest killer of young people across the entire UK. We realise that wherever you live in the UK, suicide is a tragic part of so many people’s lives. By walking between the parliaments of the 4 nations we will highlight the help PAPYRUS can offer across the UK.
As we do that we hope to:
Continue raising life-saving funds. We are close to raising £1,000,000 for PAPYRUS, it would be remiss of us not to go again!
To provide a focus for continuing the conversation with Government about embedding suicide prevention in the school curriculum.
Meet more people, who all have their own personal devastating stories around the loss of a loved one to suicide, and who want to join us in highlighting our suicide prevention message.
Fundraising
At the start of June our JustGiving page stood at £608,000, with an additional £125,000 in Gift Aid and further donations made directly to PAPYRUS we had raised over £880,000.
We will raise our JustGiving target to £1,000,000 in the knowledge that, if we reach this target, we will generate close to £1.5 million for the charity. This will allow the team at PAPYRUS to open more offices, deliver more training and equip more young people to deal with the most dangerous thing in their lives – themselves.
The PSHE Curriculum
At the moment, schools are advised to teach one hour a week of Physical, Social, Health & Economic (PSHE) education. Every school should ensure that each child is guaranteed a PSHE education that covers mental health and wellbeing, however there is no obligation for schools to address self-harm and suicide awareness.
During our walk we met very many suicide-bereaved parents, all of them said the same thing; it was only after they lost their child that they discovered that suicide was the biggest killer of under 35’s in the UK; they all asked, “If suicide is the biggest threat to our children’s lives, why is no one talking about it?”
Our schools use PSHE lessons to talk about knife & gun crime, the dangers of drug misuse, radicalisation and the terror threat but nothing is said about the biggest killer of young people – suicide. Over 200 school-aged children take their own lives every year but we are doing nothing to equip young people with understanding and skills that could allow them to save themselves.
In 2022 we walked between all 4 Parliament buildings of the UK (over 600 miles) and asked people to sign our petition asking Government to make suicide prevention a compulsory part of the curriculum – it received over 160,000 signatures; it was debated in parliament when MPs from all parties spoke in support of our campaign – there wasn’t a single dissenting voice.
The Hidden Killer
Suicide is the biggest killer of under 35’s in the UK. That means the most dangerous thing in our young people’s lives are themselves....and as a society we aren’t talking about this!
We have to walk again because our society is allowing thousands of unnecessary deaths each year. If our schools can deliver age-appropriate lessons on suicide awareness we can give our young people the knowledge and skills that will help them and others in the future.
