COMMUNITY MEETING MINUTES

[Christine Cione]

COMMUNITY MEETING MINUTES

9/24/24 and 9/26/24

Hi Counselors-

Here is a summary of what was discussed at the latest community meetings.  Read on to see what the above meme is referencing!

1. We introduced new on-call supervisors.  They are James, Cristian, Derek, Sandra, Elizabeth, Natalie and Natasha.  If you need an on call supervisor and you text the Google Voice number, any one of them may respond. In addition we still have Christine, Frank, Nimra, Emma and Dani who can respond to the Google Voice as well.  We also re-introduced some of our 988 staff; Emma, Nimra and Dani!

2. Drumroll please……Geo-routing is here! (GET OUT!) This means that callers will be routed to their local crisis center, in their area, rather than routed to LICC based on area code.  Hopefully, warm transfers will decrease because of this.  This has already begun! If we get some calls from out of area, it may be because the smaller phone carriers have not started yet, but for the main carriers, it is in effect.

3. Vibrant now requires counselors to obtain 6-8 hours a year of trainings. These can be the in-service trainings we provide, in addition to the Lifeline Portal Trainings created by Vibrant. Christine will keep track of these hours and will alert counselors when a new training or in-service is available.

4. What’s in a name? For a long time, we have had NSPL as one of the lines that you can select when writing up a card.  We are deleting that.  988 is just 988, no letters, no name! So when writing up cards, keep in mind that NSPL will no longer show up as an option for line called.

5. There is new signage at the Rockville Centre train station:

The LIRR is test-piloting these signs to see if they can reduce the number of suicides by train that take place in Rockville Centre.  These signs are stationed at the foot of stairs, escalators and in front of the elevator. Please remember to ask how callers heard about 988. They may say they saw a floor sign or that they saw a sign in Rockville Centre or at a train station.  If so, you can select “988 RVC Sign” for publicity.  If the marketing works, then these signs will be expanded to more LIRR stations.

6. Warm transfers: Please re-familiarize yourselves with the instructions on how to do warm transfers.  These are located in the counselor manual as a powerpoint presentation. We only do warm transfers on 988!  We may have to do less of these due to geo-routing, but they are important.  Vibrant would rather we do not just give out an out of area hotline, instead, they would rather we connect the person, in real time, to the 988 center closest to them.  (We can provide the out of area hotline but we should also use the warm transfer feature). We will only be warm transferring callers to their local 988 center; we do not connect callers to other agencies.   In addition, we will most certainly have to continue to warm transfer callers to NYC 988 when the caller needs mobile crisis unit. If someone calls and they require mobile crisis unit for any of the boroughs, we must warm transfer them. They cannot get a direct line to the city 988 if they have a 516 or 631 area code.

7. Community Education is doing an amazing job doing workshops in the schools every day! We are advertising our chat services even more now in the schools, and Dana is marketing heavily on social media for callers to use our chat feature.  Keep your eyes and ears open for chats coming in and the chimes that are associated with them. We really want to meet young people where they are at!

8. Finally—-I have saved the best for last. We have created a new number to use for suicide follow up and outreach calls.   This is extremely important to take note of. If someone is calling us back, because they received a voicemail that we were making a follow up call, they will be calling us back on the new number, not on Middle Earth.  Please read the attachment that Dana created, which explains all this in depth! This will make it easier to determine who is calling LICC as an initial contact ( on Middle Earth) and who is calling LICC as part of the suicide follow up program ( new number).

I will be sending out a checklist on some of the items to remember when answering 988 calls.  These are all the things you have been doing, but now you can have a checklist to make things easier when taking these calls.   In addition, stay tuned for an email about the next In-Service Training. I am taking requests so please share any feedback you have for me regarding new trainings you might like!  See you at the next meeting!

-Christine and Staff

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