Safety Insights to Support Every Student

Canopy is Branching Minds’ safety suite for managing suicide risk assessments (self-harm), threat assessments (harm to others), and functional behavior assessments (FBA for root cause). It helps safety teams document, track, and manage cases with clarity, while integrating that data into your MTSS ecosystem so support doesn’t stop at the safety team’s door.

Canopy supports the most widely recognized and research-backed protocols in K–12 safety:

• Threat Assessment: Choice of Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG) or National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) Model.
• Self-Harm: Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS).

Each is structured as a guided, step-by-step flow in the platform, ensuring teams follow the protocol in a user-friendly interface.

No. Canopy doesn’t make decisions for your team. The protocols built into Canopy—like CSTAG, C-SSRS, and NTAC—are designed to guide your process, not override it.

You’ll get structured workflows and built-in prompts aligned to each protocol, but your team leads the judgment, classification, and next steps. 

Not at all. Canopy provides structure without restriction. It supports your district’s chosen protocols but doesn’t dictate safety decisions, next steps, or outcomes. Your team stays in control while Canopy guides documentation, visibility, and compliance.

Canopy creates a layer of protection—like the canopy of a tree—over your MTSS system by ensuring that safety data isn’t siloed or overlooked.

By bringing suicide risk, threat assessments, and behavioral evaluations into the same platform as academic, SEL, and intervention data, Canopy helps teams move response from reactive to proactive, risk-aware MTSS. It doesn’t just track student crises, it helps you see them in the context of long-term support.

• For C-SSRS and NTAC: Branching Minds provides free asynchronous training on how to use these protocols within the platform.
• For CSTAG: Formal certification and methodology training is required. We partner with protocol creators and can connect your district with the right training partner when needed.

Most safety tools focus on documentation. Canopy focuses on documentation AND follow-through. It’s designed for practicality,  usability, and real-world team dynamics with features like auto-saving, pause-and-resume flows, a built-in dashboard, change logs, and individual profiles detailing the historic safety information of a student.

Canopy is intentionally focused on case management, not surveillance or automated detection. It’s designed to help teams document, manage, and follow up on student safety concerns, not flag students or predict behavior.

Here’s what Canopy does not do:

• It does not monitor web activity, social media, or search history.
• It does not integrate with anonymous tip lines or third-party alert systems.
• It does not use AI to recommend interventions or identify students at-risk.
• It does not provide pre-filled or automated decisions based on historical data.

Canopy picks up where concern begins, not where it's predicted. It's built to support professional judgment, not replace it.

Absolutely. Canopy is fully FERPA-compliant, with strict role-based permissions and encryption in transit and at rest. Only authorized users can access safety cases, and every action is logged for auditing. Your most sensitive student data stays protected, organized, and accessible only to the right people.

Canopy is a separate add-on, not part of the core Branching Minds platform.

It’s designed to complement your existing MTSS workflows by supporting student safety protocols, but it’s purchased and implemented as its own solution. If your district is already using Branching Minds, Canopy integrates seamlessly. If not, it can still be used independently for suicide risk, threat assessment, and case management.