Contact - One Aim

Caron Thompson
Director

Common Unity

With over 20 years’ experience in the Health and Social Care Sector, I founded Common Unity in 2009 with the realisation that to make a real difference in communities, there was an urgent need to develop approaches that had communities at the heart of it all. Through innovative, often challenging but forward-thinking approaches, real intelligence in respect of what works for communities as well as what assets communities hold for the benefit of all has been clearly brought to the attention of commissioners and decision makers across the west midlands and wider

Social Networks

Contact Me

Terry Rigby
Director

Forward For Life

In 2012 Forward for Life was established with the core aim of supporting communities to be suicide safer. The organisation has gone from strength to strength delivering both licensed and tailored suicide prevention and wellbeing training across England, providing strategic support to Local Authorities in innovative approaches to helping people help themselves. Forward For Life, alongside Common Unity also developed the very first ManMade Programme which was recognised by the National Suicide Prevention Alliance as a best practice example of supporting men through a peer group approach. ManMade is currently being successfully delivered in Birmingham alongside Cruse Bereavement Care and other local partners.

Social Networks

Contact Me

Communities who have the challenges are, more often than not, the very same communities that hold the solution. Forward For Life operates with the core belief that although there are many challenges that exist across and within our communities, solutions to these challenges are also to be found across and within our communities. With an overall goal of supporting communities to be Suicide Safer, we adopt forward thinking approaches to reduce inequalities and promote opportunities for enhanced well-being and improved quality of life – We believe this is both an achievable expectation across all our communities and the right of each and every individual within.

Our approach achieves both indirect and direct benefits for our communities, and with this in mind, we ensure that our partners, our associates and others’ working alongside us have the same core belief. Through our varied worksteams, tailored and licensed community centred development programmes including Applied Suicide Interventions Skills Training, Third Sector Capacity Building and Primary Care Development, we ensure that stakeholders across the board are effectively engaged at all levels to realise improved quality of life and well-being. Forward For Life is working towards a future where inequalities within society are reduced and opportunities for enhanced well-being and improved quality of life is an achievable expectation across all our communities

In Britain, each year, more than 6000 people kill themselves; that’s 4000 more deaths per year than occur on all our roads. Yet suicide remains a taboo subject that most people won’t entertain talking about it, never mind feeling able to support someone who they think might be considering taking their own life. Suicide is one of the last big taboos' in modern day society; A phenomenon that effects so many people in our communities in so many ways and yet has not been tackled by our communities. This needs to change.

On October 10th 2018, as part of Birmingham and Solihull’s Connecting Community Networks Programme, Common Unity will be hosting a World Mental Health Day Conference in Birmingham with a bit of a difference. Eventbrite

TWR provides an alternative approach to taking control of our own health and well-being. It is a virtual bridge across “The Information Chasm” that connects support services to the recipient almost instantly. TWR, by engaging citizens with sources of support directly and seamlessly is, in its own right an intervention, taking away the often wearisome process of finding the right place to get help. TWR is an online resource library of information and support that can be navigated with minimum difficulty. In addition, the ongoing management of the process is relatively small but engagement can be realised at high levels and monitored effectively.