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safeTALK is a new LivingWorks’ program that trains community members to recognize persons with thoughts of suicide and connect them to suicide intervention resources. These suicide alertness skills complement the skills of suicide intervention caregivers. safeTALK is our response to a long-known need for a program that can be delivered:
Participants learn how to provide practical help to persons with thoughts of suicide in only a few hours. safeTALK prepares them to be alert helpers. An alert helper:
When a helper does the TALK (Tell, Ask, Listen and KeepSafe) steps from safeTALK, they activate a suicide alert.
safeTALK was designed to teach skills that complement caregivers with suicide intervention skills like those learned in ASIST, LivingWorks’ two-day workshop. safeTALK-trained helpers make early recognition and referral possible on a far larger scale than any community can afford to do through suicide intervention skills training alone. When there are enough safeTALK-trained persons available, suicide intervention caregivers will be used more often.
safeTALK Trainers need to identify and determine the availability of the ASIST-trained and other suicide intervention resources in their community. This information is needed to enable safeTALK participants to make a KeepSafe connection for persons with thoughts whom they recognize. When it appears that there are few resources in a community or that access to these suicide intervention caregivers is restricted, this must be highlighted within safeTALK. It is likely that communities with limited helping resources have few suicide alert helpers either, with access to a telephone help often being the only resource. In a community like this, safeTALK can still be used to train suicide alert helpers and to help make the community aware that they also need readily available suicide intervention resources.
| Develop a list of resources. Talk to one of them about what you will be learning and teaching. Find out how they can help. Decide about a resource that you would use if you needed help. |
While safeTALK’s curriculum is sufficiently structured and detailed to guarantee high levels of participant satisfaction, the Trainer’s skills and perhaps even more importantly, their attitudes are critical. The following information on selection criteria may help you to make a decision about wanting to become a safeTALK Trainer.
You should meet the following criteria:
Most of safeTALK is a lecture presentation but a taped co-trainer, whom the Trainer can use in whole or in part, can present much of that material. When using the taped co-trainer extensively, the Trainer’s facilitation skills can be more fully utilized although care must be taken to make sure all of the content can be covered in three hours. When using the co-trainer sparingly or not at all, presentation skills become more important.
As an ASIST caregiver or Trainer, you know something about intervention. The more you know about intervention the better. Be aware that only a very limited and tightly structured subset of all intervention knowledge can be taught in safeTALK. You must understand what safeTALK can and cannot do. Learning to adapt one’s knowledge of intervention to safeTALK’s goals is one of the challenges for those who know a lot about intervention.
*The standard version of safeTALK comes with locked-in, DVD-based presentation materials with standard video clips and two variations: one with and one without the co-trainer. It can be played on any DVD player or any computer with a DVD player. An optional disc for PowerPoint customization of the presentation is also available for $50. It includes optional video clips from a growing library of clips and allows you to customize the clips you use as well as the parts of the co-trainer you want to use. However, using it requires proficiency with PowerPoint and your computer.
| Practice doing some suicide intervention simulations with supportive persons. A safeTALK trainer needs to be willing, ready and able to intervene if necessary. |
safeTALK teaches and trainers need to endorse certain fundamental assumptions about suicide:
| Practice saying these assumptions out loud to supportive persons as if they were participants in your safeTALK training. |
Your belief in these assumptions can be severely tested in presenting safeTALK. Simply endorsing these assumptions is not enough. You need to have confidence in the wisdom of these assumptions. You also need to have confidence that the participants will recognize that wisdom. Calm, patient assuredness is crucial to the participants’ learning safeTALK’s key messages.
Provisional Trainer: After completing your sT-T4T, you are considered a provisional safeTALK Trainer. (The provisional nature of your Trainer status applies only internally within the LivingWorks documentation system.) You need to successfully complete three safeTALK trainings, each with minimum of 10 participants—15 is the recommended minimum— within one year of your sT-T4T to receive your safeTALK Trainer certificate. If you do your training with another safeTALK Trainer, each of you must have done all parts of the training at least once.
Trainer listing: safeTALK Trainers need to complete at least two safeTALK trainings every year to maintain their status. If this requirement is not met, your safeTALK Trainer status will lapse in our database automatically.
Benefits of listing: As a safeTALK Trainer, your name or Trainer id number (your preference) will be listed on our website along with information about what participants can expect from a safeTALK training. You will want to tell your participants about this information to help them understand that you are part of a larger organization that is dedicated to quality control. Trainers with a history of unresolved participant complaints will be removed from the list. Trainers have access to a web page where questions can be asked and answered and provides a place where upcoming trainings can be advertised as well as a place where completed training can be recorded. In addition, Trainers receive a newsletter (3 or 4 a year) and certain training milestones will be honored.
Re-listing: Once you have obtained Trainer status, you can request a reinstatement within six months of your lapsed status with the expectation that you will complete three safeTALK trainings within a year of any lapse of status. You will have to purchase any updated Trainer Materials but at cost and pay a $50 re-listing fee. Your safeTALK Trainer status will be cancelled if the re-listing requirements are not met.
Ordering materials: You must order and use safeTALK Resource Kits for every safeTALK training. Each safeTALK participant receives a pocket card reminder of the TALK steps, two reusable stickers identifying the participant’s willingness and ability to help, a 24-paged safeTALK Resource Book and a certificate. Each Resource Kit costs $5.50 when purchased in units of 100; $6.50 for smaller orders.
Materials income: Financial returns to LivingWorks are mostly used to offset the initial and on-going development costs of safeTALK amortized over 10 years, the costs of the materials and the cost of providing Trainer support. All of these costs were paid for and financed by LivingWorks. There are no subsidies, government grants or tax benefits.
Training notification: Whether your safeTALK training is open and available to community members or closed and already filled, you MUST post the date of your training on LivingWorks’ website as soon as a date is set.
Reporting requirements: You MUST fill out a trainer report form on LivingWorks’ website for each training. Keep the participant feedback forms from your last five trainings. LivingWorks may request to see them or you may need to submit them should you want to become a safeTALK Trainer Instructor.
Presentation standards: safeTALK is standardized and customizable. It MUST be presented in a manner consistent with the manual, the sT-T4T course and approved customized materials. However, some elements of your own style can fit within that standard. You must always use current safeTALK materials. From time to time, there will be improvements to safeTALK. As a listed Trainer, you will either be able to download these improvements at no cost or purchase them at cost plus shipping and handling. If there is a change to safeTALK participant materials and you still have some supplies of the older version in stock, you may use the remaining stock.
Presentation length: safeTALK is presented in less than a half day. All trainings are to be conducted during the course of one day.
Participant numbers: The number of participants should not exceed 30 nor be less than 10. The preferred minimum is 15.
Community support resource: It is recommended that you have a community support resource available at all of your trainings to serve as your backup resource to those who might be having thoughts of suicide or to those who might uncover unresolved grief issues.
safeTALK Training for Trainers (ST-T4T) consists of pre-session work, a one-day (9 hour), on-site orientation provided by one safeTALK Instructor for up to 10 candidates and post-T4T preparation time—in total, approximately 30 hours of work with approximately 21 hours being self-organized. The Consultant for safeTALK may authorize other formal training options such as a half-day demonstration of safeTALK prior to the sT-T4T or additional protected time to allow for dedicated pre-session study or post-T4T preparation.
Once your application to become a safeTALK Trainer has been accepted, you will receive your login information to access a web-based Trainer’s Manual and a video demonstrating most parts of safeTALK, a study guide and a form for creating your Trainer notes. You will be expected to prepare for your training by studying the manual and watching the video demonstration. You will also be assigned a specific part of safeTALK to present at your training. Your sT-T4T will provide opportunities to discuss and practice parts of safeTALK. The study guide will help you prepare to make the most of those opportunities. Ideas for investing the approximate 21 hours of self-organized work will be provided along with the login information.
You can expect your sT-T4T experience to have a similar “feel” to any other LivingWorks program you have experienced. There will be a focus on a positive learning environment, encouragement of open and honest talk, respect for differences, support of each other and active participation. You can also expect it to be hard work with an emphasis on the seriousness of suicide and the part you can play in creating a suicide-safer community.
The trainer materials you will receive at the ST-T4T consist of:
Application and contracts: Reading this document and agreeing to the commitments in the accompanying application is one of the key steps to becoming a safeTALK Trainer candidate. Where applicable, your employer’s signature is also required. Your signature and your employer’s signature on your application form indicate acceptance of the safeTALK Trainer commitments. You will also sign a contract with similar content at the end of the sT-T4T. LivingWorks takes quality, individual commitment and employer support very seriously. We want you to fully understand what will be required of you as a LivingWorks’ safeTALK Trainer.
Making the right decision: If possible, it is highly recommended that you attend a safeTALK training and/or serve as community support resource at a safeTALK training before applying. Once you know the date of your sT-T4T, schedule your first safeTALK to occur within one month of completing that training. Having your first training scheduled in advance correlates so strongly with eventual success that we recommend you not attend an sT-T4T until you have your first safeTALK scheduled. When a candidate decides that they do not want to become a Trainer, only the cost of the materials can be refunded and these materials must be returned to LivingWorks. Consider your decision carefully. Do not let yourself be talked into attending the T4T if you do not feel that being a safeTALK Trainer is right for you.
| Within safeTALK you can have a very positive impact upon participants learning and at times can also contribute to participants getting in touch with emotions and experiences that they may have not fully integrated. Outside of safeTALK, you will come to be a symbol of the need for open, comfortable and direct talk about suicide in your community and organization. Most in your community and organization will appreciate having such a message evident. Some may not. Talk to a supportive person about what the role of safeTALK trainer might be like in your community or organization. |
Within three weeks of your sT-T4T, you will receive feedback from your Instructor routed through LivingWorks. This feedback will typically offer ideas and suggestions for your first training(s). It might include the suggestion to purchase consultation or technical support. Before and up to three months after your sT-T4T you will have the option to purchase consultation support in addition to the support you will receive as a Trainer (look at Trainer benefits above again). Consultation support involves access to an experienced safeTALK Trainer and Instructor for up 90 minutes in a maximum of 3 phone calls for $100. You need to pay for the connection costs.
Occasionally, an Instructor may recommend that you consider contributing to suicide prevention in another way. In that case, the option of returning your materials and receiving a refund for them will be offered. On very rarer occasion, an Instructor may decide at a T4T that they cannot in good conscience allow you to continue as a Trainer because they believe that you are likely to cause harm to either the reputation of safeTALK and/or participants attending a safeTALK you conducted. Such a situation is likely to be obvious to all present at the sT-T4T with a candidate openly displaying disrespect for others or clearly corrupting the fundamental messages of safeTALK. In this case, materials must be returned at the sT-T4T.
The feedback your instructor will be trying to determine at ST-T4T is organized around the TALK acronym.
TELL: Does the candidate present the content in an open and direct way that is easy to understand? Do the candidate’s comments convey endorsement of the fundamental beliefs?
ASK: Does the candidate ask questions in a direct way that encourage open discussion about suicide?
LISTEN: Does the candidate listen in an open, respectful and inviting way that encourages participants to express their questions, comments and concerns?
KEEPSAFE: Does the candidate facilitate awareness of and connections to and between helpers who might be in a community? Does the candidate interact with participants and facilitate the training in a way that promotes safety, openness, and hopefulness about suicide safer communities?
You will have to make an investment in time and energy to become an effective safeTALK trainer. It will be worth it. safeTALK can pay back what you put into it many times over.