Acute hospitals are the frontline of a mental health crisis. Over one million people attend hospital due to their mental health every year — and the staff who meet them first are often not mental health specialists, but emergency nurses, healthcare assistants, porters. Too many feel powerless to help in those moments.
We started We Can Talk because we believe that, like safeguarding, mental health is everyone’s responsibility — and that every member of hospital staff, whatever their role, can make a real difference to someone’s experience of care. Our training doesn’t ask staff to become specialists. It builds on the skills they already have, and connects them emotionally to patient experience by hearing directly from people who have themselves attended hospital in a crisis.
The result is a shift we can measure: staff move from feeling helpless, even negative, to feeling equipped and empowered — and the change is greatest among those who started out most unsure that mental health was part of their job.
We Can Talk is a one-hour, self-directed mental health training course for staff working in acute hospitals. It is designed for every member of hospital staff — clinical and non-clinical — and aims to build the knowledge, skills and confidence needed to support patients who attend hospital in a mental health crisis.
We started creating educational approaches in 2017 and have now trained more than 35,000 staff. We Can Talk is co-produced and co-delivered with people who have lived experience of attending hospital in a mental health crisis, and is built on an evidence-based education framework focused on three foundational areas: Communication, Safety and Empowerment.
We Can Talk is delivered to NHS acute trusts through an annual organisational subscription, providing unlimited access for all staff, students, volunteers and contractors, along with compliance and impact reporting. Find out what NHS Trusts we are currently partnered with.
Between 2017 and 2024, We Can Talk focused on supporting children and young people attending hospital in a mental health crisis, delivered through national funding. In 2025, We Can Talk moved to a local partnership model and launched a new, all-age version of the training, designed for patients of all ages and available to acute trusts through organisational subscription. The programme continues to be co-produced and delivered by people with lived experience.
We Can Talk is a registered trademark and trading name of People Un Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 11238563).
If you’d like to bring We Can Talk to your organisation, email robin@wecantalk.com to start a conversation, or request a demo.
