10.2.23 September Community Meeting Minutes

Minutes for Community Meetings
September 12, 7pm and September 13, 11am

1. NYC Well is not operational. Christine posted in the online message book last week when we discovered that NYC Well calls are being routed to 988. Administrative staff has looked into this. As of now, NYC Well is closed and all calls are indeed coming to 988. If someone is calling from the city with a 516 number, they will reach us. We will counsel the caller, per usual. However, since NYC Well was also the hub for city Mobile Crisis Unit calls, this is problematic. If someone is in need of MCU within the city, we will need to warm transfer the caller to the city 988. There are instructions in the manual on how to do this, and can be found in the “988” section.

However, there is a chance the city 988 will be inundated with calls and the caller may get routed back to us again! If this happens, and the caller needs MCU or any city referral for that matter, please look up “NYC Well” in our referrals and provide them with the website you see there. This is an online referral database that the caller can use themselves to find what they need. This is not ideal, but as crisis counselors, we can handle this!

2. Friendly reminder that there is a new 988 training that needs to be completed by October 6. This is a training on Imminent Risk that you will all find informative. Please log into learning.988lifeline.org and you will be directed to the home page. You will enter your username (your email address that you use with LICC) and your password. If you forgot your password, click that and a new one should be sent. If you never changed your password to begin with, then it is Mrpiss2740! Please email Christine or Dani with any questions. Please email Christine your certificate of completion before October 6, thanks!

3. Our Long Beach Suicide Prevention Walk is Sunday, October 1st! The event begins at 10:30am and it is always a beautiful walk on the Boardwalk in Long Beach. We will be honoring people working hard to prevent suicide, and will have some speakers and auctions to benefit LICC. Head to our website, longislandcrisiscenter.org/thewalk to register! We hope to see many of you there 

4. The counselor manual continues to be updated, so please check it out when you have down time and please send any suggestions for additions to the manual to Christine. And please have patience, as the manual is quite extensive!

5. There is a new volunteer counselor training the weekend of September 30/October 1st. We have 20 people signed up and classes begin, over Zoom, on October 7. Christine will email the schedule of information sessions to counselors in case anyone would like to attend as a refresher. If so, please email Christine and a Zoom link will be sent to you.

6. Frank and Christine will be working on an Autumn Referrals Newsletter, with the latest referral updates, so be on the look-out for that in the coming weeks.

7. As we have promised, we are now expanding our LICC Chat Services. The chat feature is now live as of this week! Chat will be offered to clients every day of the week, from 7am-11pm. The chat feature is built right into the Five9 platform. When you log on, you will make yourself ready for both “voice” and “text”, and you only have to do this one time. The system will know if you are on a call, and will not offer you a chat. If you are on a chat, the system will know and the phone will not ring for you while you are chatting with a client. The chat will “chime” just like you hear when someone is messaging you on Five9. We ask that if you are available, you answer the chat as soon as you can. However, it is offered to everyone that is on the system, at the same time. Whoever answers it first will receive the chat and it is “locked in” for that counselor. You will also see a bubble that notifies you of the chat. You must click on the “lock icon” to secure the chat as yours.

Dana has outlined ALL of this in a wonderful Powerpoint PDF, which is now housed in our online counselor manual. Just look for “Five9 Telephone/Chat Training PowerPoints* and everything you need to know is in the “chat” Powerpoint. It will give you step by step instructions on how to take a chat, and also some tips on how to have successful engagement with chat clients.

As always thank you for your attention to these matters, for attending the meetings, and if you have questions, do not hesitate to contact any administrative staff person. Stay tuned for the dates for the next community meeting!