I'll report on some short-term data I can't conclude on.
Internally, system agents comment on every single call that they answer on after they hang up. They list three things:
1. The call number.
2. The level of crisis (between 1 and 5, only applicable if the call is serious enough for an assessment to be determined).
3. The description of the call.
So, for instance:
"70032 hung up"
"70024 - level 4 - [CALLER] identified as bi-gender, had just broken up with their girlfriend, both had been in abusive situations, and the GF struggles with alcohol addiction and sexual addiction. [CALLER] was struggling with the why, and then found out the GF had issues with internalized homophobia, because [CALLER] has woman parts, but GF said it was not just that but the fact she was scared of her and said she was afraid she would become aggressive even though [CALLER] didn't seem to have an aggressive bone in their body from our conversation. [CALLER] wanted to get through the night without hurting themselves, they wanted to be able to have someone to talk with so I listened for a while, [CALLER] asked for suggestions I told them they could go have a good cry sometimes that helps to clear me on many occasions crying can be healthful, I also mentioned about meditation. [CALLER] then asked for some help to find pier support, which they live in [LOC] so I gave them the information for the [LOC] LGBT center. At this point [CALLER] said they were glad to have talked with me and that they felt they could get through and they would call the [LOC] center. I told [CALLER] they could call back in anytime they needed to talk again. They thanked me again and then we said goodbye"
Level 1 is a "lonely, just wants someone to talk to" call.
Level 5 is a "suicide crisis" call.
For the sake of my polling and review, I'm not going to differentiate between the levels. If the caller gets a call and is able to assess a level, I will consider it an actual call. What I'm interested in aggregating from these statistics in the long-run is what percentage of calls are answered.
For the last three hours, there have been 2 volunteers on-call. The same two. For the last three hours, there have been zero comments about calls. Either 1) there are no callers taking calls and they're literally on call to make their numbers look better, or 2) they're not following their own protocol and are not communicating as per protocol. Neither of these are acceptable for a fucking crisis hotline where there is zero consistent communication between operators and directors.
I will be able to make more determinations about the situation as time goes on. I have ways of making a lot of concrete numbers from assumptions.
