Lynda O’Malley

My name is Lynda O’ Malley and I have been a Health and Social Care Trainer since around 2005 and have worked in the care industry most of my adult life (a lady doesn’t tell her age, so no clues!)

Although I enjoy delivering all of the mandatory and development courses I train, I have to say my real passion is for Scotland’s Mental Health First Aid, SMHFA/YP and Suicide Prevention training. All of which I have delivered to many different groups from small community groups to large organisations. I am an ASIST and SafeTALK trainer and have recently been awarded my silver pin from Livingworks Education in recognition of my 50th ASIST course, which is something I am incredibly proud of, even more so now that the figure is now probably in the 70’s.

I’ve got the hang of this online training thing now and have been doing some training via Zoom and Teams and hope to continue to reach people across the country in this way.

I come from a small village called Chapelton in sunny Scotland and live with my husband Ross and my Patterdale Terrier, Jerry. I also have two grown up children, John and Sarah, who have both flown the nest, but come back regularly when they’re skint or need to be fed.

Living in a small village is lovely but it has on occasion brought its own problems.

My very first online training was Mental Health Awareness to a group of Young Farmers.

20 minutes in everything crashed, No internet, no phone signal, no electricity. I was very calm as you can imagine (not!)

When we did eventually manage to get power back on we discovered the issue had been caused by Big Ron the bull in a nearby field scratching his backside on a pole which held some sort of transformer and he had knocked it off resulting in no power for 3 surrounding villages for hours.

What are the chances? We resumed our training afterwards and Big Ron become something of a local celebrity, I think we can say we all got something out of that!