Suicide Prevention Community Action Plans

The RA Tas Suicide Prevention team received additional funding from the Tasmanian Government to expand the work they’re doing. This additional funding is to provide support to the 29 Local Government Councils in Tasmania in developing their own Community Action Plans (CAPs).

The funding provides for additional staff resources along with a small grant program to endorse councils to implement their CAP. These CAPs are community-led initiatives that develop supports to promote positive mental health and help prevent suicide through three key areas of training, awareness, and sustainability.

Training focuses on providing community members with the knowledge to recognise and refer other community members to appropriate supports. Through increasing awareness of support services within Local Government areas, barriers that often prevent individuals seeking support are reduced. Finally, with the development of a CAP, recognising and utilising community networks and creating a long-lasting strategy, community support and wellbeing becomes more sustainable.

CAPs are community-led initiatives that develop supports to promote positive mental health and help prevent suicide through three key areas of training, awareness, and sustainability.

Within Tasmania, local governments are diverse in their resources, capacity, barriers, and at-risk cohorts. Therefore, the Suicide Prevention team strive to work with each area individually, scoping barriers, raising awareness and developing strong partnerships from which to build a tailored CAP. Cohorts have varied from farming communities to youth.

The expected outcomes of these CAPs include increased awareness and understanding of impacts on their community (such as COVID-19); to have increased community capacity and confidence in talking about and responding to suicide and mental health; to experience greater social connection and cohesion; and to have increased awareness of supports available.