CHAT YOUR VALUE – Crisis Help-lines Assisted by Trained Young Volunteers Erasmus Project

Project Title

CHAT YOUR VALUE – Crisis Help-lines Assisted by Trained Young Volunteers

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

According to the International Association of Telephone Emergency Services (IFOTES), there are about 350 crisis centers in Europe with over 20,000 volunteers providing emergency assistance day and night in over 4 million telephone calls and an increasing number of internet contacts, over 200,000 in 2019. 2-3 thousand volunteers have to be trained every year to keep the crisis helpline working around the clock.

The task of crisis services is to accompany those people, to provide contact or relationship, to relieve them emotionally, to give orientation and, if necessary, to absorb suicidal crises. Most crisis services work with volunteers who are carefully trained for this responsible activity for months.

The need for chat advice is growing, people who cannot talk about their problems or want to use the “silent” chat to get advice and support. Experience shows that the more difficult problems are named in the chat. Often it is about (sexual) experiences of violence, abuse and in many cases also about suicide.
Therefore, there is also a great demand for volunteers in the chat. These must be well trained and accompanied and supervised in their counselling work in the chat. In order to prevent many volunteers from switching from telephone counselling to chat counselling and being absent on the telephone, it is urgently necessary to train people specifically for chat work. Here, an exchange about the experiences and procedures in the participating European countries at the beginning of the project is of great importance.

The proposed project will be organized by 6 European NGOs which maintain Telephone Emergency Services (TES).

Aim of the project

The aim of the Strategic Partnership “Chat Your Value (CYV)” is to achieve an additional value of knowledge and experience throughout common reflection and exchange on best practices of communicating, recruiting and training young volunteers to work in the chat service of helplines, and exploring possible structural changes in TES to allow young people to join and stay in TES.

European dimension

Most of the TES have more or less a long tradition between 20 and 60 years and independent historical development. And although they work under the same umbrella and with the same objectives they developed their individual professionalism on a national or local level. All the partners are involved in very active national networks of crisis centres. They profit from the national exchange of knowledge and experiences. Because of a very similar structure and purpose of crisis centres all over Europe, there must be even a higher benefit of cooperation on European level.

The common feature of all the hotlines across Europe is that all the work on the phone and in chat is done by trained volunteer workers, carefully trained and supported by full- and part time staff members working on crisis helplines. During the years the crisis centres developed their own training strategies and tools for the education of consultants for telephone and chat.

“Chat your Value (CYV)” also wants to focus the diversity of listeners across Europe. There is an important common interest of all partners to explore the gender structure of the listeners and to point out strategies how to adjust the training and recruitment instruments appropriately to gender specifics. Most of the partners´ crisis centres have the difficulty to recruit and keep young male listeners. All the partners will try to answer the questions linked to gender aspects, e.g. what are effective strategies on equal recruitment and qualifying male and female listeners for chat consultancy.

In addition, cultural and religious aspects of reasons of calling become more and more a common point of attention, as multiculturalism and multi-religiousness are no more the remark of just few European areas. Therefore, the partners will learn from each other how to consider the type of personal crises of callers in combination with their cultural and religious background.

Results

The work programme is focussed on sharing and exchange of good practice and foresees 5 Transnational Partner Meetings (DE, FR, ES, BE, IT).

During these meetings, a document that will be developed together by the partnership is a best practice handbook with recommendations and practical examples on three main priorities/actions:
1. Possible TES changes in the management of the service and human resources, especially on regard of young volunteers
2. A communication campaign aimed to recruit young volunteers, especially for the chat service
3. Guidelines for training young volunteers in listening skills, adopting innovative tools developed in the European TES environment

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 82500 Eur

Project Coordinator

IFOTES Europe e.V. & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Telefono Amico Italia
• SOS Amitié France
• ASOCIACION INTERNACIONAL DEL TELEFONO DE LA ESPERANZA
• Magyar Lelki Elsosegely Telefonszolgalatok Szovetsege (LESZ)
• Federatie van Tele-Onthaaldiensten in Vlaanderen en Brussel
• Ass. Culturale ARTESS – Association for Research and Training on Emotional Support Skills