By popular demand, I am posting this Safety Plan in my Social Work Tech Tools (and this post) for folks to look at and reference.
Disclaimer (like, hella)
So the trendy thing is to complain about the long preamble before getting to the main show on recipe blogs. Yo dawg, if you’re gonna download this intervention, please read the post first.
Need for Revision
I re-did this Safety Plan because I wanted something that looked contemporary. I did in Adobe InDesign what I couldn’t do on Microsoft Word: make pretty shapes, manipulate pretty fonts, and make everything fit on the page in an aesthetically-pleasing manner. I wanted to make it eye-catching.
About the Plan
I adapted the work of Barbara Stanley and Gregory K. Brown (2008), who came up with a great idea. I modified it a little to a little more contemporary language (and for the Spanish version, my on-brand hella-pocho Mexican flavor).
After attending a suicide intervention course recently, I saw there was an added feature to incorporate the future-oriented “what’s your reason to live” question. The instructor was talking about incorporating future-oriented talk onto the plan.
I hope that the “I’m going to use my plan because these are my reasons to live” helps to prompt at least four reasons to live. That’s my goal for when I use it.
Implementation
I made this plan in the same flavor as my ever-popular Self-Care Plan. For younger clients (again, please consult or use your best judgment), I can see the bubbles in identifying “My Warning Signs of Crisis” being used with one Crayola Marker color and “Activities I Can Do By Myself…” in a different one.
Is this timely? I mean, I can’t really do this face-to-face with clients, but I sure can send them the document through snail-mail and we can do it together over Zoom.
Modification
Lastly, After exporting to PDF, I then wrangled the heck out of this document in Adobe Acrobat to make Step 6 on both documents (English and Spanish) editable. In the four lines of each bubble, I typed in the crisis resource I am giving my client.
- WHO: Name of the resource e.g. General Hospital
- Contact Info: Phone Number with Area Code first e.g. XXX-XXX-XXXX
- When: I either put the hours available (e.g. 24 hours) or when to call (e.g. in an emergency).
Pay Me
While Social Work Tech is my hobby and I don’t charge anything for the stuff I put on here, I do like validation.
Please leave a comment below on how you like this plan… While that is preferable, you can also send me comments through my contact form.
It looks great. Thank you for sharing.
Hi
I cant get the links to work?
I’ve used your previous form so many times, and found it very helpful. I really like this revision to add in reasons for living!! Thanks for all you do!