safeTALK for the veteran community is a pilot suicide awareness training program tailored for the ex-service community - including ex-serving members of the Australian Defence Force and their supporters, e.g. family members, friends, carers, colleagues and/or civilian members of ex-service organisations.

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA), through Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling (Open Arms), conducts suicide awareness programs to increase the skills and confidence of people in the ex-service community to recognise and respond to the signs of suicide risk in others. Open Arms appointed and worked with LivingWorks Australia to develop and deliver a pilot suicide awareness training program. The one-day program was based on the existing safeTALK suicide awareness training but tailored for veterans and others connected to the ex-service community.

The purpose of the training program is to:

• Increase participants’ understanding of suicide in the veteran community
• Help participants to understand and practise the steps involved in keeping someone safe
• Allow participants to practise what can be done for people in the veteran community who may be thinking about suicide
• Enable participants to connect someone who may be thinking of suicide to people trained in suicide prevention
• Help participants to understand self-care.

DVA engaged AHA to evaluate the pilot program to establish if the training:

• Is sufficiently successful to implement into the Open Arms suite of suicide prevention and awareness training services
• Aligns with the veteran community’s needs.

AHA used the New World Kirkpatrick Model of training evaluation to examine training participants’ reaction, learning, behaviour and results over time.  This included conducting:

• Pre- and post-training participant surveys
• Follow-up telephone interviews with participants
• Consultations with the facilitators and support personnel who delivered the pilot.

AHA’s final report to DVA:

• Assessed changes in participants’ knowledge, confidence and understanding
• Captured participants’ views on various aspects of the training, and potential longer-term effects of training
• Identified barriers to and enablers of behaviour change.