Alison has been working in the community & voluntary sector since graduating from university. Living and working in Northern Ireland she has over 25 years experience within the alcohol, drug and suicide prevention field and is passionate about learning and believes that a small amount of training can make a difference in order to build confidence and have effective conversations with others who are in distress, showing compassion and ultimately reducing stigma.

Training in ASIST in 2015 inspired her to deliver suicide intervention training to as many people as possible and was recently awarded her 10 year award from Living Works for her dedication and commitment to suicide prevention. She is motivated by getting suicide prevention, and alcohol and drug understanding training to as many people as possible.

A highly innovative, community focused and performance driven person, Alison has a wealth of experience who has developed a reputation for being an expert in her field.

Alison has offered training in her above areas of expertise to various stakeholders, organisations and businesses primarily across the UK but has ventured as far as Bangkok, South Africa and India (remotely of course). Training and public speaking remains one of the most satisfying aspects of her work and she accredits her expertise to those she meets who bring a wealth of knowledge with them into the training room.

“I have the unique experience of taking the learning  with me from training room to training room, the hardest part of my job is remembering it all”

Alison has personally trained over 5000 people in Suicide intervention skills alone and has a special interest in feotal alcohol spectrum disorder and believes that this training should be in every classroom in the country in order to prevent FAS and FASD. “Prevention is where the focus needs to be, treatment is expensive, intensive and takes a lot of resources, we need more of a focus on prevention, unfortunately it rarely gets the attention it needs to make a real difference”

When Hopen was looking for ambassadors Alison’s name came up time and time again and we are delighted that she is now finally in a position to join us bringing her wealth of experience and knowledge which she is more than happy to share.