The phone rang at 12:04 am, four minutes past midnight. On the line to Distress Centre Halton’s 24-hour response line was a 17-year-old girl. More than contemplating suicide, she had made a plan. Her father had recently died. He was the only one who had really understood what her life with a disability was like. The volunteer who took the call listened and supported her for over an hour.
At the end of the call, she felt safe, “Because of COVID-19, no one has hugged me since Dad died,” she said. “This felt like a hug.”
Someone was there at the Distress Centre that night, thanks to the United Way. Someone who listened that night saved a life.
“Never underestimate the power of the human voice to give hope. You can survive three weeks without food, 3 days without water, even 3 minutes without oxygen,” says Dara Eisner Clancy, the Distress Centre’s Executive Director. “But you cannot survive 3 seconds without hope.”
People at the end of their rope, for whom all hope seems lost, call the Distress Centre “for the hope to cope.” All ages reach out to Distress Centre Halton (DCH), which has handled a suicide prevention call from an 8-year-old and has had a caller in their late nineties. Up to 1500 inbound calls per month are fielded by the Centre, which has operated continuously since 1974. Doctors and hospitals refer their patients for listening and support
September 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day: a good time to think about how important this United Way agency is to our community: all the more so in a pandemic.
Beyond dealing with those contemplating suicide, the Centre fields calls from those unable to cope with stress in many circumstances. The Centre also takes calls from other United Way agencies when other programs need additional support. The Distress Centre is a part of the continuum of care for the community. The United Way agency ecosystem provides a safety net for struggling Oakville residents at every stage.
The Distress Centre also operates an outbound program called Telecheck, which supports anyone of any age dealing with isolation (something we all understand much better due to the pandemic), and shut-ins. Some 75-90 clients are called at least weekly by Centre volunteers, adding up to over 1,000 calls per month. For many of these clients, the Distress Centre caller may be the only live human voice they hear all week and the only person who listens to them. Some clients began by calling inbound in distress and are now on Telecheck.
The need for the Distress Centre ramped up massively during the pandemic. Covid nurses and front-line workers called. Then parents dealing with lost jobs and children at home sought comfort. When schools returned, teachers had heightened stress because of health fears and children who had lost the lesson thread. When they closed again, the parents started calling.
As all this happened, the Centre understood how essential its services were. An additional 104 volunteers were trained, doubling the total, and equipped with the technology to operate remotely, as distancing rules meant the Centre’s facilities could not handle enough people to man the phones. This also meant a doubling (to eight) of paid staff to manage the larger number of volunteers. The United Way quickly responded with funds entrusted to them by the Federal government to support the ramp-up.
Distress Centre volunteer training consists of eight intensive weeks. Volunteers learn active listening, de-escalation, suicide prevention, and how to create a safety plan.
Distress Centre volunteers also provide support on our National Suicide Prevention line, Crisis Service Prevention Canada.
DCH provides an excellent distress training ground for first responders, and two DCH volunteers recently became police officers through the pandemic. A Distress Centre-trained police officer was able to help a suicidal individual while on the job, using the active listening skills he acquired as a volunteer. Others who report having benefited from the training are psychologists, firefighters, 911 operators and 311 operators.
Distress Centre Halton is a key part of the safety net that helps Oakville live up to its reputation as a City that calls itself a Town and acts like a Village, which means looking after each other. It means trying to prevent crisis but making certain, there is someone there to help through anxiety and distress and de-escalating distress before it becomes a crisis. This safety net is what United Way agencies provide. United Way funding can cover operational costs, while many other funding sources are project-based.
Without the support of the United Way, Distress Centre would not be here. “That 17-year-old would not have made it through the night without the United Way,” says Dara.
Many of us have charities we support for personal reasons. However, there is a wide variety of needs in our community. The United Way goes to great lengths to identify these needs and find and assist strong agencies with good processes to address them. United Way funds mean these agencies can spend more of their resources helping Oakville residents and less of them looking for money. As donors, we can’t know the best way to spread our donations around, but donations of all sizes from many Oakvilleans can be turned to their best effect through the United Way. And who knows when we, or someone close to us, will need help from one of these services. Our donations to the United Way ensure they will all be there for us if that day comes.
