6/19/23: JUNE COMMUNITY MEETING MINUTES

JUNE COMMUNITY MEETING MINUTES

S-Team Review
We reviewed the new criteria for outreach and follow-up calls and went over how to access forms. As a reminder, follow-up calls should be offered to anyone expressing suicidal ideation of any lethality level. We no longer have a geographic restriction or lethality level restriction.

Outreach calls can also be offered to clients that have any lethality level but they do need to live in Nassau, Suffolk, Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan or Staten Island as those are the areas we have resources for (NYC Well is the best one for any of the boroughs).

The default tab on the banner is always Follow-up. It will change to Outreach once you change the Lethality assessment to 3rd party. When making a follow-up or outreach call you don’t have to write a whole new card. You can just click on new contact in the history tab to document the call. Administrative staff are still assigning the Follow-up and Outreach calls that need to be made.

Important Reminder!!!

Please be sure to check the message book before your shifts. It has a lot of important information in it and may contain information that you need to know before your shift starts. Things change quickly around here – you don’t want to be caught “in the dark” because you didn’t read the message book!

Back-yard Bash
Just a reminder that our annual Volunteer Back Yard Bash is scheduled for Saturday, July 29th from 12PM – 3PM. We are hoping that you can make it – even if you stop by for a brief time to connect with some of your fellow volunteers IN PERSON – you know, we all look different when you can see our bodies attached to our heads ? We will be presenting Longevity Awards and other Awards of Recognition and will also be giving out our famous LICC date books so it’s well worth the trip to be here! If you haven’t already RSVP’d to Dana please do so ASAP.

Change in Card Coding
Based on feedback from Vibrant, one of our funders who keeps track of our call information, we are changing the way we check off anxiety and depression when we type up cards. We used to tell you to only check off “Mental Health – Anxiety Disorder” or “Mental Health – Clinical Depression” if the caller said they had a diagnosis. We have now changed the categories to “Mental Health – Anxiety” and “Mental Health – Depression” to reflect callers that call because they feel anxious or depressed, regardless of whether or not they have a diagnosis.

Referral Reminders
Some counselors mentioned that they are seeing an increase in calls about Medication. The categories “Medication Assisted Treatment” and “Medication Management” in the referral section of Infobase would pull up good referrals for these types of calls. Some volunteers suggested that NAMI and MHA (Mental Health Association) of NC are good referrals for this as they offer support groups for people dealing with these types of issues.

Frank and Christine will investigate adding some additional Faith-based referrals to Infobase.

Known Caller Reminders

Based on the Known Callers discussions we have been having with counselors, we have decided to relax the guidelines. Frank is working on changing them in the system but that is going to take a while to complete. So, a good rule to follow is that if you get a call from a typical Known Caller that needs some support and we used to say give them 5 – 10 minutes feel free to give a little more time if you think it’s warranted. Pay attention to the “Last time called” line on the bottom of the profile – if they have already called that day you would want to remind them of that and keep it to 10 minutes at most. Obviously, this does not apply if it is a nasty or abusive call. We trust your judgment!

Known Callers are slowly being added to Five 9 as well so you may notice that some of them come up on the Five 9 screen when they call. Once again, it is going to take Frank a long time to enter all of them so don’t rely on this as a way of ID’ing known callers.

Lastly, when writing up a call for a Known Caller, please pick a different category than “Known Caller” as the main category. Pick the primary issue the Known Caller was talking about.

Miscellaneous
There has been an increase in COH calls that are not appropriate for that line. Please remember to ask how the caller got the number – especially for that line. Document it in the publicity box on the card and write it in the summary so we can figure out where the misinformation about that line is coming from.

The 24/7 rap does not need to be given to every caller. In fact, in a way, that creates known callers. It makes sense to give it to somebody who is suicidal or going through a particularly tough time. In that case say something like “We are here 24/7 if you start to feel overwhelmed and you need some support.” Or, if you give referrals you can say, “If these referrals don’t work out feel free to call us 24/7.” Don’t say “We are here 24/7 if you just want to talk” – that sends a different message. Again, use your judgement – we trust you!

WE WILL TAKE A SUMMER BREAK IN JULY – NEXT COMMUNITY MEETINGS WILL BE TUESDAY, AUG. 1 AT 7pm AND WEDNESDAY, AUG. 2ND AT 11am