At iCarol we’re celebrating today’s landmark Supreme Court decision which effectively made marriage equality the law of the land in all 50 states of the US.
Many businesses big and small are changing their social media logos to celebrate this decision, and Pride Month as a whole. We’ve followed suit. Please check out our Facebook and Twitter pages for a peek at our temporary icon change. And while you’re there, please follow us!
We know most of you reading this blog are a part of organizations that work hard every day to improve the lives of people all over the world, some specifically working for LGBTQI causes. It’s thanks to people like you that things are continuously changing for the better. Kids are growing up in a world where same-sex relationships and now same-sex marriage is more and more normalized. LGBT Youth, regardless of where they live, will now know that the government treats their relationships with the same respect and protections as straight couples. This equality will undoubtedly lead to LGBT youth feeling valued, supported, and less isolated. There are still many hurdles to overcome, but we’re on the right track.
In honor of Pride Month we asked LGBTQI organizations to tell us more about themselves, their work, and what they saw as the highlights in the LGTBQI community and their organization this past year. Check out answers to these questions and more from Ross Jacobs, National Clinical Director of QLife, based in Australia.
Tell us a little about what your organization does, and how specifically you help the LGBTQI community.
QLife is a collaborative project, bringing together five separate agencies to provide telephone and web-based counselling for LGBTI Australians, coast to coast. We operate 365 days a year, with a small team of paid counsellors and workers supporting the efforts of nearly 200 volunteers.
What were your organization’s biggest accomplishments or milestones from the past year? What are you most proud of?
This year, QLife continued to grow, having only existed as a nation-wide collaborative project since mid-2013. (Previously, each partner service provided counselling to only their home state.) Webchat has been a significant part of this service growth, both offering clients a different way to interact, and reaching young clients for whom web chat is a far more comfortable platform than telephone contact.
What were some of the biggest or most impactful stories or moments you saw as they related to the LGBTQI community this past year? They could be happy, sad, momentous, regional, national, or international. What did you observe that really moved you?
One of the most rewarding pieces of work that QLife engaged in this year (beyond our counselling service of course!) was making ‘QLives’, a series of 16 short films featuring the lived experience of LGBTI people in all of our varied shapes and sizes. The QLives films featured heavily on the QLife Facebook page, and can be accessed at any time through our YouTube channel. It seemed to be really effective way to draw in people who may not have known about QLife to the service. We hope that watching stories from the lives of people who have similar life experiences can help people start to think about talking to someone and how this may be able to help them.
When you look to the year ahead, on what topics or issues are you hopeful/anxious/or watching closely to see how they develop?
As is the case in the US, Australia is still going through a process of dragging our political leaders across the marriage equality line that it feels like the public became comfortable with long ago. Beyond this, the mental health of our individual communities, including suicide prevention measures and access to appropriate and suitable medical care, remains an ongoing struggle.
What do you see as some of the biggest challenges still facing the LGBTQI community as a whole, or certain populations within the community?
The way LGBTIQ people are regarded, whether part of the fabric of a wider society or quite separate from it is at the heart of many of our challenges. But happily, the growing awareness, particularly in younger generations, that the individual lives of LGBTIQ people matter and are to be valued is relentlessly increasing. The way we think of ourselves as LGBTIQ people seems to be evolving too. It feels like traditional ideas of a single LGBTIQ community are being challenged, with an understanding that we are actually made up of many different communities that have different needs and interests, even among single identities – there are many distinct ‘types’ of gay men and how people choose to express this, for instance.
Thanks so much to Ross for telling us more about QLife and sharing these thoughts for Pride Month! iCarol is very pleased to be working with QLife as they provide these awesome services to Australia’s LGBTI community. QLife is always happy to talk to others doing similar work across the world, and they’d love to hear from you, via social media (they are on Twitter or Facebook) or by direct email to ! We also encourage our clients to reach out to one another to network or share information via our iCarol User Community found on your Admin Dashboard in iCarol.
Want to have your input and organization highlighted on the blog for Pride Month? Send your answers to the above questions to me !
An article featured on CNN’s website as part of their “Project Happy” series is putting the focus on Crisis Workers, their happiness with their jobs and lives, what inspires them, and how they practice self-care.
The article features quotes from staff from helplines across the US, including many of our clients, giving their input about what keeps them happy.
One key feature of iCarol is the ability to link and share service delivery with other helplines in a variety of ways. Historically a common partnership scenario involves call centers who pass some or all of their calls to other iCarol-using centers either as after-hours contracts, or on an as-needed basis for overflow. iCarol accommodates these partnerships with call report sharing capabilities. Much the same with resources, centers can share resource databases with others who may be taking their calls, or to better service the needs of help-seekers with a wider range of potential services to refer them to, or through setting up provincial and state-wide resource databases to be accessed by a network of helplines who can all take part in maintaining these resources, thus reducing burden to each individual center.
These same principles of sharing volume to benefit centers and clients alike also extends to iCarol Messaging, and in recent month’s we’ve made improvements in this arena.
As an example, one nationwide network using iCarol was using a sort of round-robin approach in how to route chats to the centers who were members of that network. Visitors would arrive to the website and click through to chat, and from there they’d be routed to one of the centers based on the schedule, and the coverage area of the center. Once they were properly routed, they’d arrive at that center’s registration page and after completing registration they’d appear in just that center’s messaging queue.
There are some challenges to this approach, namely:
The routing system didn’t take counselor availability into account so chats may be routed but the destination center may be overwhelmed with other work and short on counselors to take chats
The visitor was visible just in the iCarol system to which they were routed
Registration pages may have a different look and feel, depending on the center to which the visitor was sent
Lack of control over the data being collected by individual centers
Statistics could not be run in real-time; they had to be aggregated first
Our developers have been working on a new approach for this network, and they’re currently using it to much success during the pilot period. So, how does the approach work now? The network is using a single shared “portal” made available to the participating centers in their iCarol systems, rather than routing the chats as it did before. This means:
Standardized registration pages make for a more consistent look and feel, and better branding for the network
Pre-written messages, reporting forms, and data collection are standardized
The network system directly hosts and controls their own data, so they get better reporting capabilities
Chats are visible to any center serving the visitor’s area, meaning better load balancing and shorter wait times for visitors, fewer abandoned chats
Chats are clearly marked as being from the network, but appear in the same queue as the center’s other local chats for ease of use
We’re excited to say that this pilot period has gone very well and the network is enjoying the benefits of the shared portal technology.
We’d welcome the opportunity to talk to you about your network whether it’s provincial/statewide, or national, to see how this functionality could improve and streamline your messaging services and benefit all your participating centers and visitors alike. Current iCarol users, please open a case with us, or if you’re not using iCarol yet please contact us to learn more!
We understand how important the follow-up process is at your helpline. There are many different reasons to follow-up with a help seeker after your initial conversation has ended. Safety planning and ongoing contact with support systems are extremely important for people who are having thoughts of suicide. Or perhaps you’d like to see if the referrals a caller was given were able to help them. Many centers also use a follow-up call as an opportunity to conduct a satisfaction or quality assurance survey.
Whatever reason you are following up with a client, our follow-up activity within a call report form makes it easy to schedule these follow-ups. You can collect the important information you’ll need to conduct the follow-up call, not just the person’s name and phone number but important information to preserve confidentiality, like knowing whether or not it’s okay to leave a voicemail, or to say where you’re calling from if a third party answers the phone. Your volunteers can even sign up for an email notification to tell them a follow-up call has been scheduled and assigned to them. There’s also a handy “inbox” on the main calls page where they can quickly navigate to the list of follow-ups that are scheduled.
With our next release we’ll be launching improvements to the pages that list Follow-ups and Surveys due. Those pages, as always, are accessed from the Calls menu. Here are highlights of the changes, which you’ll see soon:
New arrows on the top bar let you change the sort order of each column: call report form number, due date, client name, phone worker, assigned to, and subject.
To make the date column sortable, that’s now in YYYY/MM/DD format.
A new search box lets you more quickly find the call reports you need by typing in a search term.
You can still reassign followups, but it looks a little different — the pulldown is gone. Instead, please just click on the “assigned to” name, and then you’ll see the list of names from which you can choose.
We hope this enhancement helps save time in your daily work; making it so you can quickly and efficiently find the information you need when conducting follow-up interactions.
March is Social Work Month and a great opportunity to appreciate and thank Social Workers everywhere for their tireless dedication to improving the lives of people worldwide. This is a particularly special year for Social Work as the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) celebrates its 60th anniversary.
Many of you working in the helpline industry have a social work background or are certified or licensed social workers, and certainly the work that any helpline does classifies as falling into the category of social work. In honor of Social Work Month, the Oxford University Press has temporarily made available, for free, articles, videos, and more that may be of interest to you.
For more great information on Social Work Month and social work in general, visit NASW’s Social Work Month webpage.
According to the National Council for Problem Gambling, over 5 million people in the US meet the criteria for gambling addiction. Over 1 million Canadians are affected by moderate to severe problem gambling.
Availability of gambling is at an all-time high, with gaming expanding rapidly online and via mobile apps. But understanding and recognition of gambling addiction as a real public health concern has not kept up the pace with this rapid expansion. Gambling can not only result in financial ruin or legal problems, but it can also lead to co-occurring disorders, depression and other mental health issues, and even suicide.
March is National Problem Gambling Awareness Month and this year’s theme is “Have the Conversation.” NCPG is encouraging that these talks happen among friends, family, and by professionals with their clients. Mental health professionals are urged to screen clients and talk to them about any gambling problems. Friends and family will want to learn the warning signs and talk to their loved ones. NCPG also wants Gambling Operators to take part by offering informational displays and provide training to their staff.
To learn more about problem gambling, check out the infographic below, and visit the National Problem Gambling Month website for more information on how you can participate and offer help to those in need of resources.
The Center for Family Safety and Healing (TCFSH) fully addresses all aspects of family violence, including child abuse and neglect, teen dating abuse, domestic violence and elder abuse. Their multidisciplinary team approach includes a one-stop, coordinated response to family violence for individuals and families through partnerships with law enforcement, child protective services, prosecution and a wide range of community resources along with an expanded forum for education, advocacy and ongoing research.
On January 8, 2015, “Where’s The Line?”, a first-of-its-kind family violence awareness campaign was unveiled, geared to empowering bystanders to act on behalf of family violence victims. More than 60 percent of Americans know someone who is the victim of family violence. TCFSH will be offering resources that are designed to educate the general public, answer questions, and triage requests to appropriate services.
iCarol is very pleased to assist TCFSH with this new campaign. Kiersten Curtis, information coordinator at The Center for Family Safety and Healing, had this to say just prior to the launch of the new campaign regarding her work with iCarol:
“Your team is magnificent…Per your earlier email, thank you for being available to help me and the quick solution you found. Tomorrow, we are launching our public education campaign and I thought that you’d like to read the media advisory since iCarol is such a fundamental component to the success of our campaign.”
Thank you very much for your kind words Kiersten! We are pleased to have you and your agency as part of the iCarol family!
We’d love to share news about your helpline’s successes, new programs and services. Please to us to share your story.
A youth’s teen years can be such an exciting time in her or his life. Enjoying some independence for the first time, beginning to plan for and think about the future ahead, and of course often this is a time when youth first experience romantic relationships and even love.
Unfortunately this is not a positive experience for all teens. According to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, one in three adolescents is a victim of physical, sexual, emotional or verbal abuse from a dating partner. According to the organization Break the Cycle, teens that experience abuse in a relationship are more likely to abuse drugs, drop out of school, engage in high-risk sexual behavior, act violently and even attempt suicide. The repercussions of such dating experiences as a teen can unfortunately follow them into adulthood as well, as without the proper support and intervention they typically find it difficult to change those abusive patterns as they become adults, and thus are more likely to continue to experience abuse in their adult relationships.
It’s important that we spread awareness of the issue, as lack of awareness is contributing to the prevalence of the problem. According to one study, 81% of parents say that they don’t think teen dating violence is an issue or they admit they don’t know if it’s an issue. And only one third of teens who experience this type of relationship ever tell a trusted adult about it. It’s up to us to recognize the signs and engage youth on the topic.
Check out the infographic below for even more about teen dating violence, as well as these great sources of information so that members of your community can learn more about Teen Dating Violence and how to prevent it:
The famous pro-football championship game that aired last night (honestly, it’s unclear whether we’re allowed to use the trademarked name in our blog, so let’s err on the side of caution, shall we? 🙂 ) is arguably watched for its commercials just as much as it is for the game itself. As usual, this year’s game produced a number of ads that are generating lots of conversation, both good and bad. It was a great year for ads that focused on social awareness. For instance the “Make it Happy” ads by Coca Cola advocate for positivity in response to bullying on the internet and social media. The “Like a Girl” ad reminds society to stop using that phrase as an insult. And after a year of controversy surrounding the NFL’s handling of domestic violence, there were ads tackling that topic as well.
Last week the organization NOMORE.org released a very powerful ad, which was also shown during the game. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out below.
This is easily one of the most compelling, important tv spots I’ve seen in a long time. When I first watched it I felt sad, scared, and anxious as I listened to the exchange between the woman and the 9-1-1 operator. It’s one thing to understand what domestic violence is, but it’s quite another thing to hear the call for help.*
There are several messages I took away from the commercial. How isolating domestic violence is, for instance. Or how resourceful and resilient survivors of domestic violence are. But for me the most resounding message came at the end of the ad with the text on the screen: “When it’s hard to talk, it’s up to us to listen.”
Finding the strength to speak up can be difficult. Finding someone who can listen, who can read between the lines if necessary in order to help — that’s even harder. And we know that helpline workers use their expert skills to do this with clients every day, not just when it comes to domestic violence, but in identifying child abuse, or thoughts of suicide. You’re able to weed through their words, to pick up on the slightest hint of what’s below the surface, and uncover the deeper issue.
But there are lots of times when a verbal conversation just isn’t possible at all. The woman portrayed in the ad was able to make an excuse to use the phone, and cleverly found a way to call for help without her abuser realizing it. There’s a reason why efforts are underway to enable texting to 9-1-1. Local law enforcement and emergency services are recognizing that in some situations, a phone call is dangerous or impossible.
More and more, help seekers reach out via chat or text instead of a phone call, too. Sometimes because of personal preference, and sometimes because silence is necessary. The instance shown in the ad is just one example; certainly chat or text has been used by those affected by domestic violence to reach out for online emotional support, or even receive emergency rescue during a violent incident. But there are other scenarios where this might be needed, and they may not all be as dire as the call in the commercial.
Think of the teen who wants to discreetly discuss his sexuality without risking a parent or sibling listening in on the conversation. Or the young woman at a party who is feeling anxious and upset, but can’t verbalize that to the friends she’s with and doesn’t want others to overhear. A child may have just been bullied in the hallway at school, and they find it much easier to hop on a library computer for a chat session than it is to make a phone call.
There are plenty of instances where someone needs to talk, but they can’t say the words outloud. It’s important that we be there to listen through the channels the help seekers want to use.
* While the call in the commercial feels very real, it is actually a re-enactment of a real call to 9-1-1
At iCarol we’re celebrating today’s landmark Supreme Court decision which effectively made marriage equality the law of the land in all 50 states of the US.
One key feature of iCarol is the ability to link and share service delivery with other helplines in a variety of ways. Historically a common partnership scenario involves call centers who pass some or all of their calls to other iCarol-using centers either as after-hours contracts, or on an as-needed basis for overflow. iCarol accommodates these partnerships with call report sharing capabilities. Much the same with resources, centers can share resource databases with others who may be taking their calls, or to better service the needs of help-seekers with a wider range of potential services to refer them to, or through setting up provincial and state-wide resource databases to be accessed by a network of helplines who can all take part in maintaining these resources, thus reducing burden to each individual center.
Whatever reason you are following up with a client, our follow-up activity within a call report form makes it easy to schedule these follow-ups. You can collect the important information you’ll need to conduct the follow-up call, not just the person’s name and phone number but important information to preserve confidentiality, like knowing whether or not it’s okay to leave a voicemail, or to say where you’re calling from if a third party answers the phone. Your volunteers can even sign up for an email notification to tell them a follow-up call has been scheduled and assigned to them. There’s also a handy “inbox” on the main calls page where they can quickly navigate to the list of follow-ups that are scheduled.
