Really Useful Conversations

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Really Useful Conversations

Conversations can change and even save lives - are you talking about the things that really matter? Conversations matter!

We have worked with literally thousands of managers, from team leader to Board level, in a wide range of industries, from media to manufacturing, the fire service to refuse collection, since February 2000. Providing a range of online, self study, blended learning packages or interactive, participative training in groups, we receive excellent feedback on our style and approach. Each of our clients

is different and as such, each of the interventions provided has been different - all with one common theme - to make a positive difference. Whether running a management programme for 320 store managers for a major high street retailer or providing one to one coaching for a television producer moving roles, we invest every effort in making the experience a positive, enjoyable, worthwhile and valuable one - ensuring a good return on our client's investment. Our style is practical, pragmatic, down to earth and people can walk away from the training and directly apply it to their management role. Most of our business comes from recommendations and referrals, repeat business as HR professionals move on and take us with them. Drop me a line for a no obligation discovery call - conversations can change organisations, develop relationships and save lives.

19/08/2026

We tell people they need to “reach out” if they need help, and it’s “ok to not be ok” and other such # encouragements - but if someone does reach out and ask for help, what help exactly is available?

Hayley was offered medication, leaflets and lots of online links, but even when she was taken by ambulance to A&E following an attempt, she still did not get the help she needed, and that’s just not acceptable.

Hayley deserved better 💔

To hear her story, as told by her very brave mum Ruth Yates tune in to this week’s Really Useful Conversations podcast episode.

17/08/2026

In my work around domestic abuse-related su***de, I read a great deal of research and often share some of the findings in the training I deliver, but I try to ensure we respect the fact that behind every statistic is a person, a life and people left living with the impact of their loss. It is important that we never allow the numbers to obscure that human reality.

That is why, in the Really Useful Conversations podcast mini-series, I wanted to make space not only for the research, but also for the lives and experiences behind it.

In this week’s episode, I had the privilege of speaking with Ruth Yates about her beautiful daughter Hayley, the circumstances surrounding her death and the devastating impact of her loss.

Hayley was not a statistic. She was a much-loved daughter whose life mattered.

We must never lose sight of the people behind the data.

This episode will be available tomorrow in all the usual podcast places 🎧

12/08/2026

My mind-blowing moment over professionals being afraid to ask about domestic abuse became rage as I read about the tragic case of Matilda Davis - mum of two children who died by su***de in 2022.

On the day she died, Matilda was seen by social workers. She was clearly distressed, talked about feeling like a failure and said she didn’t know what she was going to do BUT nobody asked directly about su***de.

The coroner later concluded that opportunities had been missed, and a Prevention of Future Deaths report followed. The social workers involved said they hadn’t “done the training” to be able to have that conversation.

Oh My Days!

My previous post describes how mental health workers didn’t routinely ask about domestic abuse, described uncertainty about what to do if somebody disclosed, discomfort about “delving deeper” and fear of making things worse, so different professionals, different systems, but such a similar gap. They knew the conversations mattered, but were not equipped to have them.

We cannot keep relying on professionals in situations where they may encounter domestic abuse or suicidal crisis and assume that knowing they should ask is the same as knowing HOW to ask.

Professional curiosity requires capability, it deserves more than a briefing document or ‘toolkit’ (read 20 page pdf), it requires confidence and self-belief. It deserves your time.

When we see distress, do we ask about abuse? When we see abuse, do we ask about su***de? When somebody presents with alcohol use, anxiety, housing problems, relationship breakdown, financial difficulty, parenting pressures or simply appears unable to cope, do we deal with the presenting issue and stop there, or have we equipped people to get curious about what might be sitting underneath it?

Matilda’s story is complex, and I am deliberately not going beyond what has been publicly reported about the circumstances of her life and death, but one thing I will definitely say - we cannot wait for somebody to use exactly the right words before we ask the questions that matter, and we must make sure professionals are capable of asking and responding to those questions.

“I didn’t know how to ask.”

“I was worried about making things worse.”

“I didn’t know what to do if they said yes.”

These are not failures of character. They are signs that we are expecting people to have some of the most difficult and potentially life-saving conversations they will ever have without making sure they have the language, confidence, practice and skills to do it.

Awareness is not enough.

Policies telling people to ask are not enough.

Being aware is not enough.

We need to get comfortable with the uncomfortable, especially in jobs where lives are at risk.

To Matilda’s family - I’m so very sorry for your loss 💔

*Guardian, Josh Halliday

11/08/2026

Mind blown! (To the point I had to pause my husband's 98th viewing of Lord of the Rings to share my disbelief with him!)

Yesterday I came across research using an English self-harm surveillance register which found that only one in five people (21%) who presented following self-harm and received a psychosocial assessment had any recorded discussion about domestic abuse.

These are people who have self-harmed and are being assessed by mental health professionals and NICE guidance is clear: staff working with people who self-harm should ask about safeguarding concerns, including domestic abuse, at the earliest opportunity. So why isn't it happening?

A later study by Knipe and colleagues asked liaison psychiatry practitioners about exactly that.

Every participant agreed that asking about domestic abuse was important and part of their professional role, but they didn't routinely ask.

The reasons they described included uncertainty about what to do if somebody disclosed, difficulty fitting the enquiry into the assessment, and something the researchers described as "delving deeper" and the fear of making things worse. The conversations felt uncomfortable and practitioners described feeling ill-prepared to deal with what might follow.

We can tell practitioners to refer someone who is suicidal to the mental health experts, but what if the mental health expert doesn't ask about the circumstances that may be contributing to that suicidal crisis?
What if domestic abuse, coercive control, entrapment, fear and loss of agency are sitting underneath the self-harm, and nobody asks?
We cannot respond effectively to suicidal distress if we don't understand what is happening in someone's life.

This is exactly why su***de prevention and domestic abuse cannot continue to sit neatly in separate boxes. Sometimes they are not two separate problems. They are part of the same process and if we don't ask, we may never know, and that might be fatal.

We HAVE to give people the appropriate training so that "opening that can of worms" is something they feel confident and capable of doing.

I understand that improving routine enquiry about domestic abuse within mental health services is already being worked on within the NHS, with implementation ambitions extending to 2029 but people are presenting following self-harm today so I'm keen to understand what we can do in the meantime?

How do we make sure that the professionals having these conversations now feel confident enough to ask the question, capable of responding to the answer, and equipped to recognise when domestic abuse and suicidal crisis may be part of the same process?

Perhaps the bigger risk isn't opening the can of worms - perhaps it's leaving it closed?

07/08/2026

“When someone dies because of domestic abuse, it represents a profound failure across society, government, and the systems designed to keep people safe. These deaths are preventable, and each one highlights missed opportunities to intervene, protect victims, and stop harm.”

Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s Strategy and those words really resonated with me because when we look at DHRs or DARDRs (Domestic Abuse Related Death Reviews) - we repeatedly learn about people who were not invisible.

They were known.

In one recent review I read, 19 different agencies had been involved - really? Yes! Nineteen and still, the system did not keep that person safe.

Known to services does not automatically mean safe.

The problem isn’t necessarily that nobody saw anything, but more likely lots of people saw something, whether the domestic abuse or the deteriorating mental health or housing problems or substance use or safeguarding concerns. Another agency saw the person at a moment of crisis and each person in that chain may have responded appropriately to the information in front of them.

But who saw the whole person?

That question becomes particularly important when domestic abuse, coercive control and su***de risk coexist, because if we separate those things into different professional boxes, we can miss how they are interacting in the life of the person experiencing them.

The Commissioner’s strategy calls for “a whole-system approach”, recognising the impact of domestic abuse across health, housing, education and beyond and that MUST include su***de prevention.

Not simply asking whether someone is known to services, but whether the services around them recognise the combined risk, share what they know, and know what to do differently because of it.

Nineteen agencies should mean nineteen opportunities to notice, connect and intervene.

As the Commissioner says:

These deaths are preventable.

***de

06/08/2026

“When you say you don’t want to be here… do you mean feeling this way or are you thinking of su***de?”

That was a question a friend asked me recently, right in the natural flow of an everyday conversation.

No dramatic change of tone.
No panic.
No awkwardness.

She had simply heard me say, “I don’t want to be here” and rather than assume what I meant, she checked.

As it happens, what I meant was that I felt vulnerable and lost following the death of both parents and the thought of a one-bed apartment overlooking the sea felt attractive, but she didn’t know that.

And that’s the point.

When we become comfortable talking about su***de, asking the question doesn’t have to turn a conversation into “A Very Serious Conversation”.

We just notice the language people use and get curious about what they actually mean.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“I’ve had enough.”

“I just want it all to stop.”

“I don’t want to be here.”

They can all mean lots of things.

We don’t need to assume someone is thinking about su***de, but we shouldn’t automatically assume they aren’t either.

My friend heard something that could have meant something more, knew about my grief, that I was struggling with emptying my childhood home, clearing out memories, so asked a simple, direct question, got her answer and the conversation carried on.

That’s what confident conversations can look like.

Su***de prevention doesn’t always happen in a crisis.

Sometimes it’s simply about not letting potentially important words slip by.

I’m lucky to have the friends that I do 🧡

31/07/2026

It’s not because they don’t care, it’s often because they are afraid.

Afraid to get it wrong, to say the wrong thing, to make matters worse, that they’ll not know what to do with the response.

I love this quote …

“Sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.”*

Because sometimes all it takes is twenty seconds of courage.

⏱️ Twenty seconds to ask the question.

⏱️ Twenty seconds to stay silent long enough for the answer.

⏱️ Twenty seconds to tolerate your own discomfort instead of changing the subject.

⏱️Twenty seconds to look wider, look deeper, look again.

For the person sitting opposite you, those twenty seconds may be the first time someone has truly seen what is happening, truly paid attention to them, truly cared enough to ask just one more question.

Awareness tells us what to ask.

Capability gives us the courage to ask it.

🧡

*Aline Brosh McKenna, screenplay for We Bought a Zoo (2011).

23/07/2026

Everyone has a role to play.

If we see su***de prevention as a "mental health issue" then we are letting people down.

Absolutely, poor mental health can increase the risk of suicidal thoughts, but not everyone who dies by su***de is mentally ill and not everyone who is mentally ill has thoughts of su***de.

Simply signposting someone to a GP is not the answer. (FYI not all GP's are routinely trained in su***de prevention) - and even if they get the prescription for the meds (that can be helpful) and are signposted to talking therapy (join that queue) - we may actually be missing seeing the help that this person actually needs.

In this week's episode of the Really Useful Conversations podcast, I am suggesting that everyone has a part to play and you do NOT have to be a mental health expert to be able to make a difference.

My mini series is focussing on the point where domestic abuse, coercive control and su***de risk collide and today we uncover why this is a COMMUNITY wide responsibility. Whether you work in housing, benefits, primary care, policing - whatever your role, we can ALL make a difference.

Please do feel free to share the episode widely - we need to take ACTION and stop simply being aware that the issue exists. Thanks!

22/07/2026

How many more women have to die before we stop treating domestic abuse, coercive control and su***de risk as three separate stories?

This week thousands of people will open Woman’s Own and read about how those three worlds collide.

For years, these have been treated as separate issues, with separate services and separate conversations, yet we continue to lose people whose deaths sit at the point where domestic abuse, coercive control and su***de risk collide.

I was honoured to be asked to contribute to this feature and if even one reader recognises themselves, a friend, a child, a colleague or a neighbour in these pages, then that conversation has already become worthwhile.

Raising awareness is only the first step though. Change begins with asking different questions, looking beyond “mental health” alone, and understanding the impact of coercive control. It means building the confidence of professionals across every sector to recognise what they’re seeing across all three stories, join the dots, and know how to respond safely.

Awareness has brought us this far. Now we need action.

Thank you, Woman’s Own, for spotlighting this to your audience - we really do need to bridge the gaps that are still costing lives.

There’s a white paper on my website if you’d like to find out more - Confident Conversations can change and even save lives 💜

19/07/2026

Admitting that you’re struggling can be so damn difficult, and even when you find the courage to open up, the people you talk to often don’t know how to respond, how to handle what you’ve just shared with them.

They ask you how you are, really, so you tell them the truth, just a little of how you really are and then they struggle to think of the solution to offer you, desperate for the recommendation to make, the wise advice to give, maybe avoiding their discomfort by simply shutting you down with a ‘you’ll be fine” or “it’ll be ok” or “it’s perfectly normal to feel this way” ….

That response is not helpful. It doesn’t reassure us, and as for your solution, most of the time, that’s not what we’re looking for, please stop looking for it.

Sometimes we just need to release a little pressure. To sort out the jumble in our heads by saying it out loud, and to feel able to lift some of the weight we’re carrying. Just to offload some stuff, create a bit of space, and find our own way by making room to think for ourselves ..

Could you do that for a friend in need? Hold the discomfort? Pay attention? Listen without trying to fix? Create a space for them to untangle the complexities of life without shutting them down with a well-intended platitude that says more about your discomfort than it does about their reality?

Could you be that person?

It’s and sometimes folks just need a bloody good listening to!

How’s today looking for you?

Address

Golborne

Website

http://www.confidentconversations.co.uk/

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