Jonathan Smith KFSM

Silence Between Sirens is a suicide-prevention cause for people who serve on the front line of the UK’s emergency services. Our goal is simple: no one in the emergency services should die by suicide. We exist to make it safe to speak up early, so that no one reaches breaking point alone.

We are writing to you because fire and rescue is where the gap is widest. There is no national collection of suicide data for the fire service. Policing agreed mandatory recording this year, and the ambulance sector is building a register. London Fire Brigade is well placed to show what good looks like. We have also written to the Prime Minister, asking for consistent recording across every emergency service.

Hannah Cooper founded the cause after 16 years in uniform. Richard Goold served as a frontline response officer with the Metropolitan Police in Peckham, South London. We both know from the inside what the job asks of people.

The cause is growing quickly. More than 12,000 frontline emergency services workers engage regularly with our content across our social channels. This summer we trained 44 blue light workers in Mental Health First Aid and suicide prevention, and supported 40 officers after the loss of a colleague.

What the job carries

Around 41,000 firefighters serve across the UK. In Mind’s 2019 survey, 60.2% of fire service staff and volunteers said they had personal experience of mental health problems.

The harm rarely comes from a single incident. It builds, shift after shift, carried quietly in the silence between incidents and taken home to families. Some people reach a point where suicide feels like the only way out. It is not. These deaths are preventable, and there are moments along the way when someone can be reached.

What the evidence shows

In Mind’s 2015 survey, 37% of fire and rescue personnel thought colleagues would be treated differently, in a negative way, if they disclosed a mental health problem at work. In 2019, only 30% of fire service staff and volunteers said they would seek support from their managers. In the same survey, only 29% had received induction training on looking after their own or colleagues’ mental health.

For firefighters, we can find no published national figure on deaths by suicide. What we do know is that small, practical steps make a difference. In an Australian trial, four hours of mental health training for fire service managers reduced work-related sickness absence in their teams, returning almost £10 for every £1 spent. More widely, an international review (2017) found that, across protective and emergency services, suicide prevention programmes were associated with an approximate halving in suicide rates.

The gap

Without recording, no one can see the true scale. What is still missing is support that reaches people early, before they are struggling, rather than once harm has been done. That is where we believe we can help.

What we are offering

Before Breaking Point, for your trainee firefighters, at no cost. A two-hour early-support session during initial training. It covers what good mental health looks like, how the job will affect people, recognising the slow slide from coping to struggling, and speaking up early. It is delivered by our facilitators, who have lived experience of the job and its toll, and we return to the same group between six and twelve months later.

The evidence for starting early is promising. In a UK trial of 570 student paramedics, resilience training before frontline work cut the odds of PTSD or major depression a year later by 75 to 80%. It is a single trial, but it points in one direction. Learning also fades without a refresher. In an independent evaluation for Mind (2018), the share of recruits who said they understood ways to build resilience rose from 48% to 93% after training, then fell to 71% two to four months later. That is why we return. We would measure what people know and how confident they feel about speaking up, before the session, straight after it and when we return, and share the results with you, whatever they show.

What we are asking

1. One hour with you and your wellbeing and training leads. We would use it to share Before Breaking Point and what we are learning from the LifeLine Crew. Both are being developed by colleagues from across the emergency services, with lived and living experience of everything we set out to support. We would come ready to agree whether a pilot with a 2027 intake is right for London Fire Brigade.

2. A clear standard of support for anyone under investigation. No one should be told they are under investigation and then left alone with it. HMICFRS recommendation 12 (2024) already asks chief fire officers to make sure all staff are aware of the welfare support available to anyone involved in misconduct processes. The NHS has gone further. A nurse died by suicide following an investigation and disciplinary process; an independent inquiry found he had been “treated very poorly, to the extent that his mental health was severely impacted”. In 2019, NHS Improvement wrote to every NHS trust that “concern for the health and welfare of people involved in investigation and disciplinary procedures should be paramount and continually assessed”, and that serious harm to anyone in the process should be treated as a “never event”. We ask London Fire Brigade to make sure that, as a minimum:

↳ people are told of an investigation in a planned way, in person where possible, with a welfare contact identified beforehand, a check on wellbeing at the time, and care over timing, so that no one is told at the end of a shift or before rest days without support in place;

↳ a trained welfare contact, independent of the investigation and ideally chosen with the person, stays in regular contact from the start to the outcome and beyond;

↳ occupational health and psychological support are offered from the outset, not only on request;

↳ risk is reassessed at each pressure point - notification, suspension or restriction, interview and outcome - and whenever circumstances change;

↳ anyone suspended or restricted stays connected to colleagues and support, and is not cut off by default;

↳ updates are meaningful, and investigations conclude without avoidable delay;

↳ support continues after the outcome, including for anyone leaving, and families know what help is available, with the person's consent.

We would welcome the chance to help your professional standards and wellbeing teams shape this.

3. Lead on recording. We ask London Fire Brigade to record every death by suicide of serving staff now, and to add your voice, through the National Fire Chiefs Council, to the case for a national fire service collection and a published national figure.

We do not claim to have every answer. We do bring lived experience, a growing community across every service and materials ready to share. If Before Breaking Point is not right for London Fire Brigade, we would value knowing why, so that we can make it better. The people who serve in London Fire Brigade go towards what everyone else runs from. We owe them support long before crisis. We would welcome an hour with you at your earliest convenience.