5 Jan
Written By Thomas Burgess
Our Mission
Save A Warrior UK CIC exists to prevent suicide and provide a pathway forward for serving and veteran members of the Military and Emergency Services communities.
Our mission is to reach people who are suffering, provide access to the Save A Warrior programme free of charge, and empower participants to take full responsibility for their lives and what happens next.
We deliver a peer-led, non-clinical programme beginning with an intensive 72-hour residential experience and continuing through a 500-day continuum of support and suggested course of healing. We create the conditions for honest and difficult work, connection, accountability and long-term integration.
Our ultimate aim is simple to say and difficult to achieve: to stop suicide in the communities we serve.
Our Vision
Our vision is a future in which suicide is no longer accepted as an inevitable consequence of service, trauma, transition or hopelessness.
We want Save A Warrior UK to become a sustainable, nationally recognised suicide prevention organisation capable of delivering cohorts consistently, supporting a growing alumni community and reaching serving personnel, veterans and members of the Emergency Services wherever the need exists.
Our long-term ambition is zero suicide within the communities we serve. Achieving that requires more than awareness. It requires intervention, long-term support, strong governance, evidence, community, sustainable funding and the willingness to keep going back for those who have not yet found their way to us.
Our vision is therefore not simply to grow an organisation. It is to build the infrastructure and community required to make Save A Warrior available for generations to come.
We Come Back For Them.
The Problem
Suicide within the Military and Emergency Services communities cannot be reduced to a single diagnosis, experience or cause. The people we serve can carry the cumulative effects of childhood adversity, military or Emergency Services service, traumatic exposure, grief, loss, relationship breakdown, addiction, transition, isolation, shame and a loss of identity or purpose.
Many have already sought help before they reach us. Some have engaged with statutory services, charities, counselling, therapy, medication or private treatment. Some will have benefited greatly from those services. Others may still be searching for something that reaches them.
The problem, therefore, is not simply that support does not exist. The UK has many organisations and professionals doing important work. The challenge is that no single intervention or service will reach everybody, and people experiencing persistent hopelessness may disengage, withdraw or come to believe that nothing will work for them.
Save A Warrior UK exists as another route.
We do not seek to replace clinical mental health services, counselling, psychotherapy, emergency care or other appropriate professional support. We occupy a different space: a peer-led, non-clinical suicide prevention programme built around lived experience, personal responsibility, connection, accountability and continued integration.
Our Proposition
Save A Warrior UK provides an intensive 72-hour residential experience followed by a 500-day continuum of support and suggested course of healing.
The programme is peer-led and free of charge to the participant. There is no financial transaction between the person in the seat and Save A Warrior UK. The cost is carried by the organisation and the community of donors, businesses, fundraisers, partners and supporters who make cohort delivery possible.
We do not promise a cure and we do not claim that Save A Warrior UK is right for everybody. We do not provide therapy or position ourselves as a replacement for clinical treatment. We provide the possibility of transformation for people who are honest, open, willing and ready to engage with the work.
The 72-hour experience is only the beginning. The 500 days that follow provide continued structure, community and accountability as participants take what they have experienced back into their relationships, families, work and everyday lives.
Our measure of success is not simply how many people attend a cohort. It is whether we can build a sustainable organisation that reaches more people, supports them beyond the residential experience, learns from the outcomes of our work and continues to be there when the next person needs us.
Save A Warrior UK was founded because we believe suicide is not an acceptable outcome.
Our mission is to intervene.
Our vision is zero suicide.
And our commitment is to keep coming back.
We Come Back For Them.
Thomas Burgess