Dear Volunteers and Counselors Answering 988:
We have just finished putting together a brand new section in the counselor manual for Suicide Follow Up & Outreach. This section includes a lot of information about making these calls, the eligibility criteria for offering them, how to handle a call from someone who is returning a call from us, documenting the calls, and lots of “what if’s” for what to do in various situations.
It also contains some specific phrasing that you can use when making and taking these calls, and we will continue to make amendments to this section as new things come up.
For those of you who were here before COVID, some of this information was previously found at the beginning of the old Suicide Follow-Up and Outreach binders in the office. We have included all of this, and more, in this new section of the counselor manual.
Please take some time to review the information in this new section and let me know if you have any questions.
-Frank
