Suicide Assessment — Oct. 20 Training for Mental Health Practitioners

David Farley, LICSW, who presented a training in September on assessing suicidality, will present a training on the same topic specifically tailored to Walk-In Counseling Center’s model, where services are free, anonymous, in-person and virtual. It will be held on Zoom from 3-5 pm on Tuesday, Oct. 20. 2 CEUs are available. Free for all past, current and future Walk-In volunteers; pay what you can for all others. To register, click here. If you have any questions, please contact Jennifer at jfincher@walkin.org. Here is the full training description:

Suicide Assessment:

Navigating Risk in the Gaps — Ethical and Legal Complexities in Crisis Care
Presented by David Farley, LICSW

Tuesday, October 20, 2026 (via Zoom)
3:00 – 5:00 p.m.
This session works best with cameras on — please plan to join with your screen enabled.

About the Presenter:

David Farley, LICSW graduated with an MSW from the UST/SCU School of Social Work in 2011. David started his practice as a social worker for Health East Hospice. He then took on a role in the St. Joseph’s Hospital Inpatient Psychiatric Unit. David then transitioned to work as a Crisis Social Worker for the various Health East Emergency Departments where he worked for 6 years. In 2015, David began working for Hennepin County as a Senior Psychiatric Social Worker in the Pre-petition Screening Program. In 2024, he became the second of two supervisors for this group.

Training Description:

Suicide risk assessment doesn’t always happen under ideal conditions. Clinicians across crisis care settings regularly work with limited information, limited continuity, and limited tools — a single encounter, an incomplete picture, and a decision that has to be made anyway.

This training uses Walk-In Counseling Center’s model — free, anonymous, and offered both in-person and virtually — as a lens into these gaps at their most pronounced. Mandated reporting obligations apply whether or not a client provides their name. Limited identifying information, the absence of a chart to flag, and no guarantee of seeing a client again can make risk assessment and follow-up more complex. Virtual work narrows the picture further, stripping away even the basic anchors of physical presence. But these constraints, in varying degrees, show up anywhere crisis care is practiced — in emergency departments, telehealth platforms, crisis lines, and other low-barrier or anonymous services.

Rather than a straightforward lecture, this will be a working session: David Farley will guide participants through real ethical and legal tensions that arise when the standard tools for managing risk aren’t available, and we’ll explore together where the gaps are, how different settings navigate them, and what a sound clinical and ethical response looks like when certainty isn’t on the table. Given the depth of this discussion, this will be a smaller, more intimate training, and we’re asking participants to join with cameras on.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to identify at least three adaptations to standard suicide risk assessment necessary when working with limited client information or continuity of care.
• Participants will be able to describe two ways limited identifying information and continuity of care affect clinical decision-making in acute risk situations, while recognizing that mandated reporting obligations still apply.
• Participants will be able to name three unique risk factors or blind spots specific to conducting suicide assessment over a virtual/telehealth platform.