The questions providers ask us most.

Suicide-safer care is an approach to working with people at risk of suicide that combines evidence-based clinical practice with sound ethical reasoning. It treats risk as something to be assessed, discussed and managed collaboratively with the client over time, rather than predicted once and documented. It is not a single protocol. It is an ongoing process of orientation and recalibration as risk shifts and the relationship deepens.

Prevention is the work done before a crisis to reduce risk and build protective factors. Intervention is the direct clinical response when someone is at risk, including screening, assessment and safety planning. Post-intervention is the follow-up care after an acute episode, including continuity of contact and monitoring. Postvention is the support provided to those affected after a suicide death, including families, communities and the providers involved.

The standard of care is what a reasonably prudent provider with similar training would do in similar circumstances. In practice it covers screening and assessment using validated approaches, collaborative safety planning, counselling on access to lethal means, appropriate documentation, and follow-up. Falling below it is the central question in malpractice claims following a suicide death.

The National Association of Social Workers convened a task force to establish standards of care for social work practice with clients at risk of suicide. Michelle Scott and Maureen Underwood served as co-chairs of that task force. The standards will be available on the NASW website in September 2026.

Zero Suicide is an aspirational systems framework built on the premise that suicide deaths among people in care are preventable. For an individual provider it means working within a system that screens everyone, uses validated assessment, builds safety plans collaboratively, addresses lethal means, provides evidence-based treatment, and maintains contact during transitions in care, rather than relying on individual clinical instinct alone.

Zero Suicide tells an organization what has to be in place: screening, assessment, safety planning, means safety, care transitions. It does not tell an individual provider how to hold the conversation, how to reason through the ethical dilemmas that arise inside it, or how to document that reasoning afterward. Our training is built as a complement to Zero Suicide training rather than a replacement. It takes the same standards of care and works them down to the level of practice, ethics and documentation for the person actually in the room, which is where organizations already implementing Zero Suicide tend to find the gap.

Both, and the distinction matters. Most suicide training is built around the acute crisis, meaning the person at risk right now. Providers working with chronic suicidality, where suicidal thinking is a long-standing feature of someone's life rather than a single emergency, are often left applying a crisis approach to suicide that does not fit the situation in front of them. Our training covers how the standards of care apply across that longer arc, how to document ongoing risk that never fully resolves, and how lived experience in treatment informs what genuinely helps.

A defensible assessment considers risk factors, warning signs and protective factors, uses validated assessment tools, and is grounded in a behavioral definition of suicide rather than prediction. It should be collaborative, documented in line with recognised standards, and connected to a safety plan and follow-up. Our training covers how to elevate assessment to a competent standard of care across settings.

Lethal means counseling is a conversation about reducing access to the methods a person at risk is most likely to use, usually involving the client and the people around them. It belongs in the assessment and safety planning conversation, not as an afterthought, and it is one of the elements most closely examined after a death.

A safety plan is a collaborative, written plan identifying a person's warning signs, coping strategies, sources of support and steps to reduce access to lethal means. A no-harm contract asks the person to promise not to harm themselves. Safety planning is the evidence-based practice. No-harm contracts have no established evidence of effectiveness and offer no protection in a malpractice claim.

Yes. Claims following a client suicide are among the most common malpractice actions brought against behavioral health providers. Liability generally turns on whether the provider met the standard of care and whether the record shows it, not on the outcome itself. Doing what you were trained to do and documenting it is the protection.

Documentation that shows the reasoning, not just the result: what risk information was gathered, how it was weighed, what the plan was, what was discussed about access to lethal means, and what follow-up occurred. Critically, the record should show not only what you did but what you considered and ruled out, and the reasons why. A note showing an option was weighed and set aside for a stated clinical reason is far stronger than one that is silent on it. Our training covers the documentation standards that support both good clinical care and defensibility.

Organizations can face exposure where staff were not trained or supervised to the standard of care for the population they serve. Training is one of the clearest ways an organization demonstrates it took reasonable steps, which is why we deliver programs to whole teams and settings rather than individuals alone.

Whether a risk assessment was completed and how, whether a safety plan existed and was collaborative, whether access to lethal means was addressed, whether follow-up happened, and whether the documentation reflects a reasoned clinical process consistent with recognised standards of care.

ANCHOR is built for a general audience and assumes no prior training. CHART is built for all behavioral health providers and care managers, including those in hospitals, agencies, schools and private practice. Because standards, law and evidence continue to evolve, we recommend refreshing training rather than treating it as a one-time requirement.

CHART is available in 3, 4 or 6-hour formats, delivered in person or live and synchronous over Zoom, and is built for groups of 70 to 100. The 6-hour day includes a lunch break and two short breaks, with a self-care activity built in. Slides and handouts are provided digitally in advance.

Follow-ups are not required, but one can be arranged if requested. It is a 90-minute Zoom consultation specific to your setting and population. Participants register in advance and can submit the questions they most want addressed, so the session focuses on implementing the standards of care in the environment they actually work in.

Yes. Continuing education credits are available through the American Association of Suicidology for providers nationally. Credits are recognized in relation to the Association of Social Work Boards for social workers, the National Board for Certified Counselors for professional counselors, the American Psychological Association for psychologists, and Department of Defense providers, with nurse practitioners to follow. Credits are national rather than state specific, at one credit hour per hour of training.

Ethics is the spine of the curriculum rather than a module bolted onto the end, so in substance this is ethics training: social work values, professional standards, and the ethical dilemmas that arise in suicide care are worked through directly rather than summarized. Continuing education credits are issued through the American Association of Suicidology as described above. Because ethics continuing education requirements are set by individual state licensing boards and vary between them, we recommend confirming with your own board how the credit applies to your specific ethics requirement.

Most suicide prevention training teaches either clinical technique or risk management. Ours integrates the two and grounds both in ethics. It is delivered by the co-chairs of the NASW task force on standards of care for suicide, so participants learn the standards from the people writing them, and it uses a conversational approach with a behavioral definition of suicide so providers can adapt skills they already have.