Health workers, community representatives and nine Wagga residents with lived experience of suicidal crises are co-designing an alternative to the emergency department for people in distress.

Wagga will be home to one of 20 "safe spaces" across the state, for which the NSW government has pledged $25.1 million over three years under its Towards Zero Suicides program.

Mental health advocate Kate Wall is part of the Wagga co-design and said the group plans to provide a place "for people to feel heard and hopefully helped".

"It's really lovely to see the hope lift in the community. It's amazing seeing that we're taking a direction and it's getting somewhere," Ms Wall said.

"Ideally, in a nut shell, we're going to have a place people can come to where they're going to feel looked after and they're going to feel respected and valued, even in such a state of crisis."

Murrumbidgee Local Health District Towards Zero Suicides coordinator Richard Parks said the Wagga co-design was "well underway" with plans to open the safe space as soon as possible in 2021.

"This needs to be a community initiative, it can't be just the health service," he said.

"A safe haven is all about creating a warm, inviting, non-clinical space. The staff who will be manning the safe space are peer workers. They're people with lived experience themselves."

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Mr Parks said the site will also be staffed by clinicians and will have emergency mental health assessment available if required.

At this stage it is undecided whether or not the site will on Wagga Base Hospital grounds.

The co-design process is being facilitated by lived experience of suicide organisation Roses in the Ocean, who will analyse the feedback for the Murrumbidgee Local Health District before the safe spaces in Wagga and Griffith are built.

Roses in the Ocean chief executive Bronwen Edwards said she had been told the Wagga community was engaged and "right behind the project".

"People have been asking for these sorts of alternative services for a long, long time. It's about having options for people," she said.

"Emergency departments were never designed for people in crisis and staff who work there haven't been equipped with the time and the resourcing to do the job they'd really like to do with these people."

Mr Parks encouraged anyone interested in participating in the upcoming co-design for a Suicide Prevention Outreach Team to contact him on 0477 710 846.

You can find more information about the Murrumbidgee Alternative to ED safe spaces co-design, as well as provide feedback on the co-design process, on the Roses in the Ocean website.

If you need support or are struggling with mental illness, please contact any of these crisis support helplines: