Oral Presentation (max 25mins) The National Suicide Prevention Conference 2024

The Bega Valley Eurobodalla Suicide Prevention Collaborative (the Collaborative) is a coming together of 30+ local organisations, community members and people with lived experience of suicide to reduce the rate and impact of suicide in the local region. The Collaborative formed in late 2022, however work to establish the Collaborative began much earlier in October 2021.

The Collaborative represents a local, community-wide effort to change the way we support people – moving away from a mindset that thinks about suicide only as a mental health issue.

The Collaborative is a local governance vehicle, aligned with the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention (NMHSP) Agreement in NSW, which calls for:

• A systems-based approach that recognises the causes that lead to suicidal distress are multifactorial and strongly linked to broader social determinants of health and wellbeing.
• Suicide prevention to be coordinated at the regional level through local governance, planning, service delivery, commissioning and monitoring.

But how do you establish a Collaborative?

This presentation will set out the approach and practical steps taken by COORDINARE - SE NSW Primary Health Network, community partner the Bega Valley Suicide Prevention Action Network, the Black Dog Institute (BDI) and numerous cross sector stakeholders to build and sustain a local, whole of community approach to suicide prevention, and during the COVID pandemic.

The region is located on the far south coast of NSW with a population of approximately 76,900 people and covering almost 10,000 square kilometres. The area is made up of a series of regional towns with large distances and rural locations in between. The needs of the region are influenced by its location, social, economic, health and community systems.

This journey involved several stages including:

• Developing shared knowledge of local strengths, needs and goals for sustainable collaboration
• Online workshops co-developed with the BDI to deliver localised evidence based or informed suicide prevention practice and implications of emerging policy
• Co-developing a shared purpose, values, ways of working (governance and support model) embedding lived experience of suicide
• Setting up our ways of working, initial priorities visual identity and growing membership
• Working to deliver on priorities in prevention and community awareness, supporting lived experience peer workers, postvention, evaluation and advocacy.

The Collaborative drew on the experience of sister collaborative, the Illawarra Shoalhaven Suicide Prevention Collaborative, and hope to be able to share our learnings with others, particularly in regional and rural communities.