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Scott Smith, Assistant Trainer, ssmith@nrscrisisline.org
Jen DiNicola, Call Center Coordinator, dinicola@nrscrisisline.org
National Runaway Switchboard
3080 North Lincoln Ave.
Chicago Illinois 60657
1-800-RUNAWAY
Working on a crisis hotline can be both rewarding and challenging. One of the many challenges that volunteers and
staff face are calls from consistent, angry or prank callers. We also hear our share of abusive calls and callers who
present with sexual issues. Our presentation will discuss strategies to for continuing to provide quality crisis
intervention despite these challenges, including how to: identify challenging callers, develop policies to address difficult
calls, and prevent crisis line staff fatigue in these situations.
In training our volunteers to work on the crisis lines, we teach them our five-step solution-focused, crisis intervention
model. While we state that liners should be able to discuss any crisis with our callers within the context of this model,
some calls require additional skills.
These difficult calls come in many forms. Prank callers are usually not callers in a crisis situation. The calls are often
characterized by jokes or obviously unreal situations and have a short duration. Angry callers may be angry at social
services in general or because of services we have or have not provided on a previous call. Consistent callers are often
familiar to crisis line staff and generally present with the same issue each time they call despite having received crisis
intervention and resources in the past. Callers who present with sexual issues are unique in that these calls may involve
language or topics that can make liners uncomfortable even though those issues are a crisis for the caller. However,
some callers who present with sexual issues may be exploitive of liners through the language they use or other
manipulations. Various techniques can be used to differentiate between these types of calls but care should be taken to
avoid misidentification (through the use of lists or blocking public numbers).
It's important for crisis line workers to examine why certain kinds of calls are difficult for them. Each type of difficult
caller requires a different response from the crisis line worker and identifying these types of calls can be difficult for
even the most "veteran" of crisis line workers. Some calls resemble callers in the midst of a crisis situation and liners
may feel "tricked" or "used" if they discover the call isn't "real." In some cases, prank calls and chronic callers may take
away from other callers in crisis. By developing techniques or policies for handling these types of calls, crisis line staff
can continue to provide the same level of service to all their callers. These policies can also help to avoid the problems
that lead to liner and staff burnout.
The National Runaway Switchboard (NRS) has been the federally designated national communications system under
the Department of Health and Human Services' Runaway and Homeless Youth Act since 1974. For the past 30 years,
NRS has addressed the needs of youth and families in crisis, including, but not limited to, issues of runaway and
homeless youth. For our purposes, a youth is any young person 21 and under. Our callers may be a youth in crisis or a
guardian, friend, relative, or social service worker who is concerned about a youth. Though NRS is based in Chicago,
we serve the entire United States and its territories through a database of over 17,200 resources. In 2004, NRS handled
approximately 115,000 calls.
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