Walk of Hope 2024 - Stirling to Norwich and 5 new Papyrus offices!

Raising awareness.

Suicide is the biggest killer of those under 35 in the UK. We only learned this terrifying fact because our daughters took their own lives. By raising awareness, we hope we can help prevent other families from being devastated by suicide.

Progress since our first walk

On our walk in 2021 we met many other suicide-bereaved parents who shared their stories. Like us, many of these parents only found PAPYRUS after losing their child, it was then that they discovered that suicide is the biggest killer of under 35s in the UK – they all asked, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell us?’ ‘Why didn’t anyone tell THEM?’

At the end of this walk, with a collective voice of grieving parents ringing in our ears we decided that we would ask the government a simple question – If suicide is the biggest risk to our young people’s lives why don’t we teach them suicide prevention in schools?

Our interaction with government was less than satisfactory so we were inspired to walk again, this time the focus was getting suicide prevention added to the school curriculum as a compulsory subject. In 2022 we walked between all 4 Parliament buildings of the UK (over 600 miles) and asked people to sign our petition asking Government to make suicide prevention a compulsory part of the curriculum – it received over 160,000 signatures; it was debated in parliament when MPs from all parties spoke in support of our campaign – there wasn’t a single dissenting voice.

Subsequently we were invited to meet the Prime Minister at Downing Street and Gillian Keegan, Secretary of State for Education. We have worked with the team at the Department for Education on their review of the Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) curriculum – a revised curriculum will come forward for consultation in early 2024. We will, of course, be responding to that and asking our supporters to do the same.

We continue to talk about our girls, the walks and our campaign. Talking about suicide and suicide prevention helps break the stigma around the subject and encourages people to talk to their own children about their concerns.

We are determined to do what we can to prevent other families suffering the same devastating loss and crushing grief.