Seattle Academy Partners With Forefront for Suicide Prevention Training

Seattle Academy’s partnership with FOREFRONT Suicide Prevention started in the fall of 2015. Forefront is based at the University of Washington in the School of Social Work. Their mission includes suicide prevention, policy change at the state and national level, creating innovative programs, and providing research around the topic of are of Suicidology. We had the privilege to be part of their first ever school-based training program for high school age students in Washington state with twelve other local schools in our area. The formal training program was over a three-year period that officially wrapped up in June 2018.

Seattle Academy is in our fourth year of partnering with Forefront to work together in creating suicide safer schools. One way we are doing this is conducting annual faculty/staff, parent, student-to-student and teacher-led student trainings and train them in Forefront’s LEARN curriculum. Currently 8^th and 9^th grade students are receiving this training in their Health courses.

On January 7, Jess Claesson and Jen Nelson trained one hundred and seventh faculty and staff, which has been the largest group of faculty/staff trained at one time. Additionally, our parent representatives, Jen Schulz (Sam Patterson ‘23) and Sylvia Ketcham (Esme ‘22 and Sammy ‘20) will be leading a training for parents on February 6. Students have also created a Student Suicide Prevention Council which started a club this year around the topic of suicide and mental health. These eight students have also been trained to facilitate peer-led LEARN trainings and later this year will have opportunities to present to their peers.

If you have more questions about the work that Seattle Academy is doing  with Forefront, you can contact Leigh Hopkins, Director of Counseling at lhopkins@seattleacademy.org.