Like a map you can throw on the ground and walk through.
This toolkit is built to be scanned, not read. You will not get through it in one sitting and you are not supposed to. Find where you are, see where you are going, take the next step.
Before anything else
This document discusses suicide directly. Not euphemistically, and not at a distance. It includes what students say, what counselors say back, and what happens when it goes badly. That is deliberate, because vagueness is what leaves a person frozen in a room with a student.
If you need to stop reading, stop. If something here lands close to home, 988 is available to you as much as to the students you serve, call or text, any time.
Being nervous about this work is the correct response, not a disqualification. A counselor who is scared is a counselor taking it seriously.
How this is organized
Units and Modules. A Unit is the container. A Module is the piece inside it. Unit 6 is Safety Planning. Module 6.3 is building the plan.
Module numbers do not change. A reference you write in your own notes will still work next year, and it will point at the same page, the same web address and the same training slide.
Three markers appear throughout.
Critical Reflection
Stop and think. Usually about who this lands differently for. These are not rhetorical.
✓ Take Action
Do this before you move on. If you cannot, that is worth noticing.
Where the depth lives, on the website. Each one is labeled open, gated, or training-only, so you always know whether you can reach it.
What you can get, and what needs the training
Everything SAFER has is visible. Every tool is named and described in the Tools Index at the back, with its purpose, whether or not you can download it today.
Everything compliance-critical is open to anyone. The parent notice, the opt-out letter, the readiness assessment, the crisis resource template, the statute guidance. A school that never trains with SAFER can still screen legally and safely, and that is our commitment to suicide prevention.
Some operational material requires the training. Group curricula and facilitator guides are delivered in training only. The reason is not scarcity. Handing a school a group curriculum they have never been trained to facilitate is not access, it is risk.
How to read this if you have twenty minutes
Unit 0, then Module 0.7, the readiness assessment. That is enough to know whether your school is ready and what you would be taking on. Everything else can wait until you have decided.
