What are Community Action Plans?
How can they be used to assist in developing a coordinated response to suicide prevention within communities?
Community Action Plans are not a new concept, they have been used to help communities tackle a number of topics ranging from alcohol and other drugs through to ageing populations. Where you may have heard about them recently is in suicide prevention and the development of Suicide Prevention Community Action Plans or SPCAPs.
Outlined within the National Suicide Prevention Trial there is a big emphasis on Primary Health Networks developing SPCAPs to help tackle suicide rates within their regions.
The National Suicide Prevention Trial emphasises the importance of PHNs develops SPCAP to tackle suicide rates within their region.
What are Community Action Plans exactly?
Community action plans are akin to road maps for implementing community-led change. They identify what will be done, who will do it and how it will be done. They describe exactly what a community wants to accomplish, how it will do so and the resources needed to be successful. They become a framework for implementing topic specific activities within a community, all of which are community-owned (1).
Done well and they can be incredibly useful documents that bring a community together to address a particular issue. Done poorly they can end up being just a waste of people’s time and resources.
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
supporting those bereaved by suicide.
They can also (and arguably most importantly) provide vulnerable people with a sense of belonging through social connectedness and can help improve their skills for coping with difficulties (2).
What does a good SPCAP look like?
A good SPCAP is based on a number of elements, it needs to:
The image above demonstrates the various components of an effective SPCAP.
Be a visionary document led by the community
Feature formatting and visual design elements that interest and engage the reader
Be written using language that is appropriate and safe for all communities located within the target SPCAP region
Be founded in robust governance structures and evaluation frameworks
Ensure that actions and objectives are location specific, achievable, sustainable and consider priority populations
Outline activities required to complete the actions and objectives
Be underpinned by evidence, policy, and be supported by an evidence informed suicide prevention framework, such as the Lifespan Model, European Alliance Against Depression or the LIFE model.
How do I create a good SPCAP?
Creating a community owned SPCAP that is effective an, both time and resource efficient, can be a complex and daunting process. Fortunately, Beacon Strategies have come up with a process that we believe works very well.
In essence developing a SPCAP will require these key pieces of work:
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
a population-level data analysis of areas which 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
A 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.
Develop 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.
And that’s it! You now know how to (theoretically) develop a suicide prevention community action plan. While there is a lot more complexity that goes into all the processes behind the different stages, these are the key steps you’ll need to take to create your own.
Sources:
Keller, S., 2019, Community Action Plan, https://sswm.info/sswm-solutions-bop-markets/improving-water-and-sanitation-services-provided-public-institutions-1/community-action-plan.
World Health Organisation, 2018, Preventing Suicide, a community engagement toolkit, https://www.who.int/mental_health/suicide-prevention/community_engagement_toolkit_pilot/en.
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