Tap My Safety Plan is a prototype card-accessible safety-planning tool. It is designed to make a personal plan easier to open during unsafe moments, connect short skills and journal notes back into that plan, and keep personal anchors close without turning the app into therapy.
What the app does
- Opens a crisis-use view from the physical card or phone home screen.
- Stores a user-created safety plan with warning signs, coping steps, contacts, safer-environment steps, and reasons to hold on.
- Provides optional personal anchors: photos, notes, and voice reminders kept inside the plan.
- Lets journal and short-skill work suggest plan additions for the user to review manually.
- Exports a full plan, crisis card, and clinician summary.
Safety boundaries
The app does not monitor risk, contact services automatically, or replace professional support. It does not score suicide risk, diagnose, triage, or promise that using the tool will keep someone safe. In urgent danger, the app directs people toward emergency help.
Evidence-informed design
- Safety-plan structure follows the common pattern of warning signs, internal coping, social support, professional support, means-safety steps, and reasons for living.
- Personal anchors mirror the “reasons to live / hope box” pattern used in safety-planning apps, but keep it optional and user-controlled.
- Short skills are limited to bounded CBT, DBT, problem-solving, and plan-review tasks. EFT has been removed.
- Journal entries are private first. Only selected short lines become reviewable plan suggestions.
Privacy and data
Core data is saved on the device unless account or cloud features are active. The local access PIN is optional and protects only this browser/device. Testing should include what someone expects to happen if their phone is lost, shared, replaced, or opened by another person.
Assurance checks still needed
- Clinical safety review and documented escalation assumptions.
- Accessibility review on small phones, screen readers, reduced motion, and colour contrast.
- Data-protection review before any cloud restore, account, or sharing feature is enabled.
- Usability testing with lived-experience reviewers and professionals before pilot use.
- Clear implementation guidance for NFC/QR cards, especially privacy and safe-use contexts.
Reference points
The prototype should be assessed against safety-planning practice, NICE evidence standards for digital health technologies, and NHS DTAC-style expectations around clinical safety, data protection, technical assurance, usability, and accessibility.