Who are they?

The Patrol Team was founded by Suicide Prevention Bristol in 2018 and have received advanced training in suicide prevention.

The Patrol Team are volunteers who believe that people deserve care and compassion in their time of need. Those needs could be as a result of homelessness, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, intoxication, drug abuse, assault or any other issue which has caused personal distress or the potential for physical harm.

We strive to help prevent suicide and we are aware that the above mentioned needs along with others can be a contributing factors to a person finding themselves having suicidal thoughts. This is the reason we feel it is important for us to reach out to those in a range of environments and situations, to ensure they feel supported.

- 72% of people who complete suicide have not been in contact with any mental health services in the year before death. -

Roles

What's their role?

They help people whoever they are and whatever their situation, for example by listening, caring, offering practical help or by referring people to other (specialist) agencies who can help them. They will also provide assistance until emergency services arrive and provide them with a handover that can be important within that situation.

We provide not only support to other outreach and emergency services within the area but provide support to those that are not in services.

- Suicide is the most common cause of death for those aged 10-19 -

Training

Our training is both in-house & professionally outsourced. Here is just some of the mandatory training our volunteers receive:

Communication and Listening Skills
Mental Health First Aid
First Aid
Call Handler for NSPUK
Safeguarding
Patrol Guidelines
Water Rope Rescue
Race Ahead
Emotional Resilience
Health & Safety

Due to the varied backgrounds of each of our volunteers, we also find that they bring with them their own amount of incredible knowledge & skills to the team too.

Nearly 800,000 people die by suicide in the world each year, which is roughly one death every 40 seconds

Coverage

What area do they cover?

Our teams cover 30 miles from Bristol City.

We service a population of around 1.8 million across Bath and North East Somerset (BaNES), Swindon and Wiltshire, and Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire.

We are proud of the comprehensive range of services we offer and the compassionate care our staff & volunteers provide. We remain committed to working in partnership with service users, carers, healthcare system partners, other healthcare providers, and a wide range of voluntary sector organisations to ensure we can be responsive to individual needs.

- There is one suicide for every estimated 25 suicide attempts -

Additional resources

Missing Persons

The team are also called upon to locate and support missing persons that have been missing within 30 miles of Bristol.

We have a large team of volunteers that are able to cover a wide area quickly and a welfare vehicle that can be called upon 24/7.

Along with this, we have a thermal imaging drone. This proves invaluable to support our team cover a larger area to try and locate any vulnerable individuals that may be at immediate risk of harm. The drone is also available 24/7 and is brought out by one of our trained pilots.

Mobile Safe Space

(Please note the Outreach Team is not an emergency service and does not replace the emergency services. If you have serious concerns for someone’s immediate safety then they can go to Accident and Emergency or phone emergency services on 999 for assistance)

How and Why We Started...

Our charity was originally a local charity named Suicide Prevention Bristol and was founded in August 2018 due to the sad loss of life of a mum and newborn baby in Bristol.

Charlotte Bevan and her four-day-old daughter, Zaani Tiana Bevan Malbrouck, had already reached the area where they sadly lost their lives 10 minutes before the hospital called the police.

Charlotte who had schizophrenia and depression, had stopped taking medication so that she could breastfeed her child.

Charlotte, 30, left from St Michael’s hospital in Bristol with her baby shortly before Christmas last year, and mother and child were subsequently found in the general area of the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Our founder Michael Everett felt that there needed to be a way of supporting people that were going to locations in and around Bristol to end their life that felt they were unable to reach out for help. The best way that was found to help people that haven't reached out was to set up a team of people that patrol the areas where people take their life to support them and show the person that people do care and find alternative solutions to suicide. This was the start of Suicide Prevention Bristol.

Starting something that had rarely been done before was an incredibly difficult task. There was of course no manual to follow, meaning that we had to create our own bespoke training along with the training from Mental Health England and local training providers EDP Training. In 2020 we were further assisted with our training by Avon Fire and Rescue for emergency water throw line training and then going on to complete our ASIST, TRiM and Jessops training.

September 2019 we were awarded the Gold Star Award for our volunteering activities in Bristol and we were picked as the hero of Bristol for volunteer of which were incredibly pleased that we have the recognition throughout Bristol of the work we are doing.