Developing a Co-Produced Practice Framework to Support Personalised Safety Planning for Adults Experiencing...

Suicide safety plans are widely used internationally in health and social care settings. This study aimed to co-produce a framework for supporting personalised safety planning, sensitive to the needs, preferences and values of people experiencing suicidality.

Phase 1 conducted semi-structured interviews to explore the views and preferences of adults with lived experience of suicidality on the content and implementation of personalised suicide safety planning. In Phase 2, interactive practitioner workshops reviewed and refined a draft framework for personalised suicide safety planning. Data analysis was conducted in two steps: an inductive thematic analysis of interview data, followed by a deductive-inductive approach to develop the themes using data from two workshops with practitioners.

n = 11 adults with current or previous lived experience of suicidality participated in semi-structured interviews, and n = 16 practitioners from primary care, secondary care, third sector and emergency services involved in providing suicide prevention were recruited to two workshops. Two overarching themes and six sub-themes were identified: (1) the personalisation of safety planning (sub-themes-co-production, involving family and friends, true personalisation) and (2) the process of safety planning (sub-themes-implementation, format and purpose) were used to inform the structure of a prototype personalised suicide safety planning framework.

Personalised suicide safety planning requires early intervention and a person-centred approach. Pivotal to this is the need to move away from standardised tools towards the development of a workforce with the skills and confidence to work flexibly and collaboratively with the people they are supporting. Future research is needed to test the utility of the framework in a range of settings, including primary care, urgent care and the third sector.

This study was co-produced from the outset by people with personal experience of suicidality. Pre-study public engagement helped inform the study design, and peer researchers on the study team collaborated in all stages of the process from design through to dissemination, including development of this manuscript. PPI involvement was included in practitioner workshops and in producing accessible dissemination materials.