The team of Brisbane North PHN is one of the national sites chosen to deliver National Suicide Prevention Trial (NSPT) funding.

Our work had two important parts. The first was to engage deeply and sensitively with communities to understand their experiences, successes and reflections during the four years of trial funding and to report on these. The second was to deliver useful materials the service organisations could use to seek further funding and sponsorships as they transitioned from trial funding.

To successfully undertake community engagement, we again partnered with Janine Crawford, a skilled health consultant and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander woman. Our work included workshops, face-to-face interviews and a highly successful yarning circle, and these important and sensitive conversations—which included Sad News/Sorry Business—were given the time and space each needed.

The finalised report was submitted to NSPT as a qualitative reflection on the remarkable achievements of the trial—including the PHN’s commitment to community-led co-design, and the healing within communities that was begun through the intentionally collaborative process.

To offer creative services that were suited to the context, needs and existing resourcing of the seven service organisations, we offered a menu of items, ranging from fact sheets to marketing consultations. The groups then chose the elements that were of greatest use to them.

Part of the unique nature of the Brisbane North PHN NSPT trial was the emphasis on community partnerships and collaboration, and we embodied this in our design approach, too. To enable groups to pitch together or separately for any future suicide prevention funding, we created a single brand style to visually unify any designed material. Each group, then, had its own logo and its own colour palette within that visual style—a brand within a brand. That way, any future funding pitches that relied on our designed material could look as though the groups were unique but still closely aligned.