Meeting the Prime Minister
We have been invited to 10 Downing Street to meet Rishi Sunak.
On Tuesday 25th April we will talk to him about what we’ve learned whilst walking across the country talking to people about suicide prevention
We are delighted to be invited to meet him and take our campaign to have age-appropriate suicide prevention included as a compulsory part of the school curriculum to the centre of Government.
We came together after losing our daughters, Sophie, Emily and Beth, to suicide; 3 suicide-bereaved dads from across the country who had never met before. In the aftermath we discovered that suicide was the biggest killer of young people under 35 in the UK. Since discovering this horrendous fact, we have been determined to talk about suicide prevention and save lives. As we set off on our first walk in 2021 we had no idea of the support we would gain from across the country and further afield. From walking and talking we have learnt that suicide does not discriminate and whoever you are you could be touched by this total waste of precious life. By teaching our young people how to handle suicidal thoughts and where to turn to, we will be giving them the life-skills to survive and investing in our nation’s future. We have seen this first-hand.
When we meet the Prime Minster on Tuesday, we will be carrying the names of the many suicide-bereaved families we have met along the way and the names of their loved ones who took their own lives. Their stories and names are now part of our story.
We will also carry the support of the 160,000+ people who signed our Government petition; we will carry the support of the 33,000+ people who have donated over £1,000,000 in our name to the wonderful live-saving charity PAPYRUS; we will carry the support of the hundreds if not thousands of people who have walked with us, many of them sharing their own desperately sad stories; we will carry the support of the many inspirational mental health and suicide prevention charities we have met and which deliver live-saving services; we will carry the support of the MPs who debated and supported our proposal to have suicide prevention included in the school curriculum, and those who supported Dr Neil Hudson MP’s Early Day Motion; and, most importantly, we will be carrying the memories of our daughters, Sophie, Emily and Beth, so that we can make a difference to future generations and save lives.
We really hope our message is heard.