Success With A New Form of Follow-Up - Lifeline Blog

​Contact Community Services began in 1971 as a 24-hour telephone counseling and crisis hotline staffed entirely by volunteers.  Since then, we have added multiple other services including an information and referral line, reassurance calls, and most recently crisis chat.  As part of my role as Interactive Media Specialist for Crisis Intervention Services, I have aided the center in building a follow-up program that reaches out to vulnerable individuals.  As part of that program, we have started a new initiative to reach out to chat visitors via email and have already seen success in this method.  We’re enthusiastic about expanding our opportunity to reach more people who may be at risk and to continue to offer support in a new and exciting way!​ As evidence surrounding the importance of follow-up calls for suicidal individuals increases, our center has placed importance on expanding our follow-up services.  The Contact Community Services crisis center provides reassurance calls to isolated seniors, referral and well-being check-ins for individuals who were seen at the hospital or psychiatric emergency room for suicide-related reasons, and follow-ups with hotline or Lifeline callers who remain at elevated risk for suicide at the end of the call.  We have received positive feedback from constituents because our follow-up calls provide referrals to local programs and connection for those who feel isolated or have no other support system.  After getting involved with Lifeline's crisis chat program in 2013, our center saw a dramatic increase in the number of contacts with individuals at an elevated suicide risk; these contacts were especially high for teenagers and young adults.  With this rise, we decided to evaluate our follow-up program to determine if it was meeting the needs of this new group of vulnerable individuals.  As was the practice on our hotline, we had been offering high-risk chat visitors the option of a follow-up phone call.  While some visitors accepted a call, we found that many used the chat service because they felt uncomfortable speaking over the phone or because they enjoyed the level of confidentiality chat provides.  As requests for follow-up through emails, texts, and "outgoing" chats grew, we decided to test an email follow-up system. Our goal was to create a system that best served visitors but was also manageable for our chat specialists. We created a specific email address so that all follow-up comes from one central server that can be accessed by all chat specialists.  We also set up time constraints for answering follow-up emails (only during chat hours) so that we could let the visitor know our limits in providing support.  We decided to not include any sensitive or specific information from the chat, in order to keep the email as confidential as possible. We were concerned about visitors reaching out via email during a crisis.  Because chat specialists do not have access to email 24/7, we did not want individuals to use an email as a form of emergency communication.  To reduce the risk of this occurrence, we added a disclaimer at the bottom of all chats that indicates the limits of email usage and provides both our Contact Hotline number and crisis chat website, along with the Lifeline number and website. Although this is a new program for our center (and is continually changing as we learn) we have already seen success with the implementation.  We have reached out to various chat visitors who could not accept follow-up calls, including a homeless man who uses a local library for internet access, a young female who lives alone and has a broken phone, and a young woman with a degenerative medical condition who feels uncomfortable speaking on the phone.  While we don't receive an email back from everyone, the ones who have responded sent us messages of thanks and hope.  Most have stated that it was so helpful to have someone to talk to during their crisis and that they will reach out again in the future. ​ As we all know, it can be difficult to talk to someone during a crisis and then leave without ever knowing what has become of the person, especially if he or she remained at higher risk.  Follow-up via email has been a welcome addition to our center because it has allowed us to reach out to those who may still be vulnerable, invite them to chat again, and let them know that we continue to care, even after our initial conversation is over. -Stephanie Lewis, Interactive Media Specialist for Crisis Intervention Services​ at Contact Community Services