Part of the vision of the Nightline Association is for fewer students to die by suicide; a vision that Nightline services promote by providing empathetic and confidential listening support for over 1.5 million students across the UK and Ireland. Answering a call or instant message from a fellow student who is considering taking their own life can be nerve-racking and distressing for Nightline volunteers, which is why the Nightline Association has provided additional training on this topic for many years, and has recently launched virtual sessions as well.

Starting in 2013, the Nightline Association recruited a team of volunteer facilitators to deliver in-person training sessions on suicide awareness and emotional resilience as an addendum to the in-house training programmes of each Nightline service. This training was met with incredibly positive feedback and, over the years, Nightlines requested more specific support on responding to and engaging with calls about suicide.

Thus, in 2018 the Nightline Association partnered with the Charlie Waller Trust to develop a bespoke suicide calls training package that would be dynamic, evidence-based, and relevant for the type of frontline work Nightline volunteers do. A team of volunteer facilitators began delivering this in-person training to Nightlines in the spring of 2019 but this delivery was of course cut short by the pandemic the following spring. Since then, the Association has once more collaborated with the Charlie Waller Trust to transform the half-day in-person training into a 2.5-hour virtual session that can be delivered to Nightlines whilst the pandemic restrictions continue to limit in-person training opportunities.

The aims of the virtual suicide calls training are to broaden volunteers’ knowledge and understanding of suicidal ideation and intent, increase volunteers’ confidence in receiving and responding to calls about suicide, and to understand the concept of facilitating hope in a Nightline context. While Nightlines deliver their own initial and ongoing volunteer training, this virtual session provides an opportunity for further resources and information about calls related to suicide. The training includes discussion and activities on how Nightline volunteers can explore and engage with the continuum of suicidality that callers may be presenting, as well as covering the importance of volunteer self-care and support networks.

Since launching this virtual training in March, initial participant feedback has shown a 50% increase in self-rated confidence from before the session to after. One participant’s feedback on the session was: “I will use it to improve how I approach going on shift and as a reminder to have confidence in my own knowledge and skills. The training will help me to remain calm when taking shifts and has also reminded me about the importance of taking care of myself too.”

The Nightline Association is incredibly grateful to the funders of the Suicide Calls Project: Charlie Waller Trust, Matthew Elvidge Trust, and Accenture. Their support has allowed the Nightline Association to further support our affiliate services and to ensure that volunteers are as confident and competent as possible in listening and responding to students who reach out about suicide.

We are delighted to be chosen as the THE Awards charity partner for 2020/21, and to be able to showcase this exciting training programme.

By sharing the development and aims of this specific training programme we hope to increase awareness of the professional and high-quality training that Nightlines have access to, and therefore the outstanding support that these student volunteers provide to their peers.

For more information about what we do, please visit www.nightline.ac.uk.