Early childhood and schools

Suicide Postvention in Schools

Suicide Postvention Guidelines Including Suspected or Attempted Suicide
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Department for Education and Children's Services (SA), Catholic Education (SA), Association of Independent Schools of SA (1)

A framework to assist staff in supporting their school communities at different timeframes.

The electronic document comprises two files: main content including sample documents; cover and tab dividers.

About the resource

"This document is designed to assist schools in responding to the tragic occurrence of completed, attempted or suspected suicide within their student community, a process known as postvention. It aims to support communities in grief and to guide schools in recognising and responding to the risk of suicide contagion. Important to achieving both these purposes is the requirement for sensitive sharing of information across government and non government schools, between mental health agencies and schools and between families and schools.

These guidelines form part of a set of child protection related policies that have been developed collaboratively by the Department of Education and Children’s Services, Catholic Education South Australia and the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia. The government and non government school sectors are committed to promoting consistent child protection standards across all South Australian schools.

This document should be seen as a resource which complements schools’ efforts to promote mental health and supports their critical incident management processes." (p. ii)

Using the resource

"These guidelines provide a checklist of the immediate and longer term steps that should be taken in responding to completed, attempted or suspected suicide. Some of the information is clearly relevant to completed suicides only.

The checklist is followed by five sections containing detailed advice on why and how these steps should be taken within the particular time frames. Sample letters and handouts for use with parents, staff and students are provided in Section F.

The guidelines must be read in sequence and in their entirety. This is not a document that can be used partially. It is essential that leaders and their emergency response teams re-familiarise themselves with all the information in the guidelines as soon as they are aware of a suicide or attempt." (p. iv)