Life Promotion and Suicide Prevention FNQ

Meeting the Collaborative | Bernard Sabadi

It has meant a great deal to have been a longterm and consistent Collaborative member. It’s important that we have, and can, bring together a group of dedicated passionate people in our region to address the unfortunate suicide rates in our country, as a community.

Kunjur’s foundational story is best described as a community led response to loss. We knew something was missing from our community that should have been available - creating a place where men can express their struggles and know they are not alone.

We needed to start something like that in our community, where men can help and support each other and build each other up. Community members wanting to help each other.

A lasting place for one another: A place to speak, to listen, to share food, and to offer support drawn from their own experience.

Everything that Kunjur has become and continues to be, has come out of the circles of sharing. That’s how we’ve always brought the humanity to it, to be ourselves, keep it respectful and in the ways of our people.

Within the collaborative, we are doing everything in our power now to ensure we create positive change that will have great impact that’ll be felt and welcomed by our communities for many years ahead. The work we will undertake now and into the days ahead will be of more action than recent times.

…to connect and share our experiences and work to enrich each other, ultimately helping the people and communities we support.

Kunjur First Nations Men’s Collective | How to have a helpful conversation: Bernard Sabadi

Community Conversations at Your Place

What is a community conversation?

An intentional and gentle conversation exploring what suicide prevention means to us as a community. A conversation with fellow community members in a genuine opportunity to explore what’s important: A remembering of the strengths and richness that already exists.

What it isn’t?

A lecture; a presentation; a service; a gathering of data.

Who is the audience?

This is for anybody with an interest in life promotion and suicide prevention. This is for all of us who have conversations over the fence and in the tea rooms. We have so many roles in our lives as parents, volunteers, employees, business operators, meaning we each have something to contribute and a role to play.

How can I contribute | What do I bring?

An open and curious mind with a desire to work with others in creating compassionate communities.

Interested in a conversation? Let us know here.

Connections and Collaborations

Continuous Communications

Intentional engagements that are foundational for community development.

Professor Heather Douglas AM

The Collaborative backbone team caught up with Professor Douglas in exploration of the intersection of domestic and family violence (DFV) victim suicide. Heather was incredibly generous throughout the conversation and shared insights of her legal policy analysis and how DFV may intersect with suicide and how an apparent suicide can sometimes conceal coercion or homicide.

Calendars were out and the Symposium was pencilled in - what a great conversation to look forward to next year.

Deaths by suicide in the context of domestic and family violence: Examining context, prevention and responses Cripps, Douglas, Fitz-Gibbon, Vasil

Suicides and claimed suicides in the context of domestic and family violence and coercive control: Legal and Policy Responses Douglas

Professor Michael Salter

The Collaborative backbone team had the honour of meeting Professor Michael Salter where we yarned about exploring, as communities, the adult responsibilities in safeguarding our young people.

When we open up conversations on youth suicide, we often hear of familiar sets of circumstances that lay on top of the event - bullying, social media, no safe spaces - that are all relevant. What we don’t often explore with the deepest of considerations, are some of the mechanisms and experiences that may have been endured by young people that can also be the drivers of distress.

Michael’s work offers a valuable lens to understand.

Yep, calendars were out again and the Symposium was pencilled in - another great conversation to look forward to next year.

UNSW Sydney - Professor Michael Salter | Childlight Global Child Safety Institute

Cassowary Coast Regional Council

A big yarn up was enjoyed by the Collaborative backbone team when we met online with Councillors Trudy Tschui and Jeff Baines. With the shared desire to support their constituents’ vision for compassionate communities, we are exploring what community conversation opportunities are available in 2027 to present the gift of the question, “What does a good life look like?”

Tableland Regional Council

It is always a pleasure to catch-up with Michal Granich from TRC. Last week was no different when we yarned about what community conversations could look like across the Tablelands. So rich, so engaging and deeply curious.

Cormack Russell has consistently offered both theoretical and practical alternatives to the overt political, commercial and institutional servicing over communities. Rekindling Democracy has not strayed. There is perhaps a sense of doubling down in Russell’s latest offering when viewed through current global agendas.

Russell positions citizens and their relationships as fundamental, and professionals positioned in enabling local action rather than directing it from above. Without this repositioning:

“Citizens begin to believe that a good life is not to be found in interdependent relationships at the centre of community life, alongside their neighbours, but in the services and programs at the edge of their communities, provided by salaried strangers.”

The book offers a practical guide to working alongside communities and a call for a more equitable relationship between citizens and institutions.

There aren’t any free versions of this book that we can share, so just go and pay for one of the better professional development opportunities you will come across.

Be prepared to be challenged, to be reoriented and to re-member.

Are you loving these recommended readings? Would you enjoy a chance to chat about them with others? Let us know if you would like to be included in the monthly Reading Club. Register Here.

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