Community Action Plans

Community action plans are akin to road maps for implementing community-led change. They are a catalogue of issues and objectives a community put together to implement change.

Community action plans describe exactly what the community wants to accomplish, how they will do it, and the resources needed to succeed. They become a framework for implementing topic-specific activities within a community, all of which are community-owned. 

What is a community action plan?

How can community action plans be used to assist in developing a coordinated response to suicide prevention within communities?

Although suicide is a complex and multifaceted issue, communities can play a significant role in prevention. They are well placed to help reduce risk factors and reinforce protective factors by:

  • providing social support to vulnerable people

  • engaging in follow-up care

  • raising awareness and fighting stigma; and

  • supporting those bereaved by suicide. 

They can also, importantly, provide vulnerable people with a sense of belonging through social connectedness and help improve their skills for coping with difficulties (2). 

What are the elements of a Suicide Prevention Community Action Plan?

A SPCAP document is based on a number of elements. It needs to: 

  1. Be a visionary document led by the community 

  2. Be written using language that is appropriate and safe for all communities located within the target SPCAP region 

  3. Be founded in robust governance structures and evaluation frameworks 

  4. Ensure that actions and objectives are location specific, achievable, and sustainable and consider priority populations

  5. Outline activities required to complete the actions and objectives 

  6. Feature formatting and visual design elements that interest and engage the reader

  7. Be underpinned by evidence and policy, and be supported by an evidence-informed suicide prevention framework, such as the Lifespan Model, European Alliance Against Depression or the LIFE model. 

Lifespan Framework model diagra,

The Black Dog Institute Lifespan Framework Model

What is the process of creating a SPCAP?

Creating a community-owned SPCAP can be a complex process so we have outlined the key steps to creating SPCAPs.

Below we discuss three key steps when creating the SPCAP:

Situational analysis

This should give you a sense of what’s really happening in the region and should include:

  • the key contextual features around suicide prevention within your region

  • what suicide prevention programs or policies have been done

  • what is currently happening

  • key learnings from prior suicide prevention activities that have taken place

  • population-level data analysis of areas that should be prioritised for suicide prevention activities 

  • a service mapping exercise detailing the suicide prevention services available to residents within your region - this will allow you to identify any service gaps, duplications and barriers to using the services 

Stakeholder engagement period

The stakeholder engagement period is where you should be engaging with key people that will inform the actions and objectives of the final plan. Key aspects of this engagement should include: 

  • Development of a stakeholder engagement plan that outlines the intended stakeholder engagement approach. 

  • A ‘current state’ stakeholder engagement loop that looks at how people are feeling right now, what issues they’re finding are predominant, as well as getting their experiences and opinions on what’s happening right now. 

  • A ‘future state’ stakeholder engagement loop tries to extract the ‘to-be’ scenario from stakeholders as well as help create a shared vision for change amongst the community. 

Development of the SPCAP

During this stage you should collate your engagement findings, develop them into a final plan and then implement it, ensuring to ‘launch’ the plan to create publicity within the local community. For this stage you need to:

  • Collate and compile the results of the community engagement together to form the basis of the content for the SPCAP. 

  • Graphically design a visually appealing document that details the actions and objectives from the community consultations that are priorities for the region. 

  • Detail exactly what each action is, how it will be completed and how it will be measured to ensure that it has been completed.  

You can find further information about how our project SPCAPs were created in the strategy and report documents on the website.