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Part Two: Safety Planning as a Clinical Intervention

Thursday, March 19th, 2026   9:30 AM EDT -12:00 PM EDT
Tzivia Reiter, LCSW
$75.00 Cost For Member: $55 Cost For Student: $45

Safety Planning as a Clinical Intervention reframes safety planning as an active, relational, and evidence-based therapeutic intervention rather than a bureaucratic or compliance-driven task. Participants will develop advanced clinical skills in collaboratively constructing individualized safety plans that enhance client engagement, coping, and risk reduction. Through applied clinical examples, the workshop examines best practices for implementation, including developmentally and contextually appropriate means restriction strategies, ethical considerations, and clinician language that promotes client ownership and follow-through. Emphasis is placed on avoiding common pitfalls that diminish the effectiveness of safety planning and on creating plans that are realistic, meaningful, and responsive to ongoing clinical assessment.

About the Presenter

Tzivia Reiter is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the Director of Children's Services at OHEL. Her many articles on topics impacting the Jewish community, including Trauma, Mental Health and Disabilities, have appeared in major Jewish publications.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Explain the therapeutic function of safety planning as an active clinical intervention rather than a compliance or documentation tool.
  2. Identify and describe the essential components of an evidence-based, individualized safety plan.
  3. Collaboratively develop safety plans that enhance client coping, engagement, and risk reduction.
  4. Apply clinically appropriate means-restriction strategies across a range of identified suicide methods while maintaining ethical and relational integrity.
  5. Evaluate common safety-planning errors and modify safety plans to increase clinical relevance, feasibility, and effectiveness.

Agenda:

2-Hour Agenda – Part Two (Aligned Line-by-Line to Objectives)

Clinical Level: Advanced Intermediate / Post-Doctoral
Total Time: 120 minutes

1. Bridging from Assessment to Intervention (10 minutes)

  • Brief integration of Part One (assessment → intervention)

  • Why assessment without intervention is insufficient

  • Safety planning as an extension of therapeutic engagement

Advanced focus: Shifting from risk identification to risk reduction

2. Reframing the Safety Plan as a Therapeutic Process (15 minutes)

  • Safety planning vs. no-suicide contracts

  • Evidence base supporting safety planning

  • How safety plans function relationally and emotionally for clients

Clinical emphasis: Meaning-making vs. form-completion

3. Core Components of an Effective Safety Plan (25 minutes)

  • Identifying early warning signs

  • Internal coping strategies

  • Social supports and professional resources

  • Environmental safety and emergency steps

  • Matching components to client capacity and context

Clinical application: Review of anonymized examples (effective vs. ineffective plans)

4. Collaborative Safety Planning: Clinical Skills in Action (20 minutes)

  • Language that promotes collaboration and ownership

  • Working with ambivalence, resistance, or minimization

  • Adapting plans to developmental, cultural, and cognitive factors

Experiential element: Brief role-play or structured case discussion

5. Means Restriction as a Clinical and Ethical Intervention (25 minutes)

  • Rationale for means restriction in suicide prevention

  • Strategies across common methods (firearms, medications, ligatures, environmental risks)

  • Navigating autonomy, family involvement, and clinician discomfort

  • Ethical and documentation considerations

Advanced focus: Maintaining alliance while addressing lethal risk

6. Common Pitfalls and How to Repair Them (15 minutes)

  • Overly generic or clinician-driven plans

  • Unrealistic coping strategies

  • Failure to revisit and revise plans

  • Treating safety plans as static documents

Clinical focus: Turning safety plans into living, evolving tools

7. Integration, Clinical Judgment, and Takeaways (10 minutes)

  • Integrating safety planning into ongoing treatment

  • Knowing when a safety plan is insufficient

  • Key clinical principles for immediate application

  • Questions and discussion

These workshops offer 2 Live Interactive Continuing Education Credits

This presentation is open to:
  • Social Workers
  • Professional Counselors
  • Therapists
  • Psychologists
  • Licensed Mental Health Practitioners
  • Medical Doctors and Other Health Professionals
  • Other professionals interacting with populations engaged in mental health based services
Course Level: intermediate
Level of Clinician: intermediate
  • New practitioners who wish to gain enhanced insight surrounding the topic
  • Experienced practitioners who seek to increase and expand fundamental knowledge surrounding the subject matter
  • Advanced practitioners seeking to review concepts and reinforce practice skills and/or access additional consultation
  • Managers seeking to broaden micro and/or macro perspectives

Participants will receive their certificate electronically upon completion of the webinar and course evaluation form.

Disability Access - If you require ADA accommodations, please contact our office 30 days or more before the event. We cannot ensure accommodations without adequate prior notification. Please Note: Licensing Boards change regulations often, and while we attempt to stay abreast of their most recent changes, if you have questions or concerns about this course meeting your specific board’s approval, we recommend you contact your board directly to obtain a ruling. The grievance policy for trainings provided by NEFESH INTERNATIONAL is available here Satisfactory Completion Participants must have paid the tuition fee, logged in and out each day, attended the entire workshop, and completed an evaluation to receive a certificate (If this is a pre-recorded program, a post-test with a passing grade of 80% to receive a certificate.) Failure to log in or out will result in forfeiture of credit for the entire course. No exceptions will be made. Partial credit is not available. Certificates are available after satisfactory course completion by clicking here.
There is no conflict of interest or commercial support for this program.
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Refund Policy:
Full Refund until 48 hours before scheduled date.
48 hours before: full refund less $5.00 processing fee. After event no refund will be given.
*exclusions apply for reasonable need and cause.