Video Transcript:

Voiceover:

Thank you for watching Paper to Practice, evidence-based advocacy made simple. In this video, we will learn techniques for adopting web or text-based hotlines by hearing from Logan Forrester, the volunteer coordinator for Michigan State University’s Center for Survivors. Also, we will once again hear from Dr. Carrie Moylan and Dr. Michelle Munro-Kramer about inappropriate calls and chats and how difficult they can be to navigate. First, let’s discuss the varying strategies for developing a web-based hotline.

Dr. Carrie Moylan:

If a program is considering adding a web or text-based hotline, we have a few suggestions of things that you should be thinking about that includes what sort of a technology platform would meet your needs. So you might want to think about things like whether you will be having staff answering this hotline from a fixed location like a call center, or whether you will be using staff or volunteers who need to be mobile because different tech platforms will meet different needs. You may also want to think about things like whether your web-based hotline will be 24 hours a day or whether you will use shortened hours for a chat or text-based hotline. You may think about things like whether to use the same staff or volunteers to simultaneously answer phone-based hotline calls and text-based hotline calls, or whether you might want different staff or volunteers

Logan Forrester:

When developing a web-based chat crisis service. It is also important to keep in mind how you’re going to be training your staff or volunteers to be responding to chats, which can be unique and bring its own unique challenges to providing crisis response for survivors. Also, thinking through what type of support backup staff or supervisors may be able to provide in real time to the responders.

Dr. Carrie Moylan:

So being able to think through some of these things before launching a web hotline would be really helpful. Some of the things that you might want to think about are how to establish a warm grading in a text-based context. So you might have to show that you’re listening and paying attention in a different way, such as responding promptly, showing that you remember details from the conversation. Other ways to show that you are paying attention. It may also be helpful to focus on one thread of conversation at a time.

Logan Forrester:

Building rapport with survivors is an important step in any crisis service that you’re providing. And building rapport over chat can be uniquely challenging, so keeping in mind ways to set the tone of the chat, reminding the survivor that you are here and that it may take you a minute to respond to their chat, but that you’re here to support them. Also, ensuring that you are able to provide consistent response time. The longer that you wait to respond, the less time that a survivor might have to stay on the chat with you for various reasons. So figuring out ways to communicate in a concise and professional manner, but still providing that empathy is an important part of training. For chat-based service, you are going to get a variety of different ways in which the survivor is going to be communicating with you, which could include emojis or abbreviations, and that may be something you would want to consider in just keeping a brief worksheet or something that volunteers or staff can look to when receiving messages or communication that they’re not necessarily used to in chat. But we also do not recommend because of the variety of ways in which a survivor might understand text-based communication, we do not recommend volunteers or staff using those emojis or abbreviations. In turn. One additional thing to keep in mind when training volunteers or staff to respond to chat-based services is keeping in mind how you will support survivors who do not speak English or have limited English proficiency. How are you providing just as quality, empathetic, and professional services to those survivors?

Dr. Carrie Moylan:

It’s not uncommon in chat-based interactions for there to be an unclear ending to the chat. The chatter may just stop responding or navigate away from the chat. This might be good news that the survivor got what they needed and didn’t feel a need to continue chatting, but it can leave the responder feeling a little bit unsure about whether they have met all the needs of the chatter.

Logan Forrester:

And so having consistent procedure on how to end a chat after a survivor stops responding to the volunteer or to the staff is important for keeping the line open for additional survivors who may also be needing support. An example of this might be waiting approximately three to five minutes checking in on the survivor. Hey, it’s been a few minutes. I just want to check to see that you’re still here. I’m still here to provide support for what you need, and then waiting a little bit longer for a response and then sending an additional message. I may need to close the chat if I don’t receive a response in order to keep the line open for other survivors, but you’re always welcome to chat again in the future if you need to be reconnected.

Voiceover:

One of the challenges that arises when developing a web or text-based hotline is being able to identify when a chatter is using the chatline in a way that is not consistent with its intended purposes. Next, we will learn more about various strategies for solving this challenge. Inappropriate calls are not new for many hotline responders. Those who have or currently provide hotline support may have experienced calls that are outside of the purposes of the hotline, including calls that might be considered inappropriate in some way. Many programs may provide training and guidance on how to respond to these calls when they happen, but the techniques to handle these situations must be adapted when applied to web or text-based hotlines, it may not be immediately clear when a chat is outside the scope of the hotline. It is common for responders to answer empathetically respectfully and quickly to all chatters, even those who may be deliberately causing discomfort or harm. It is important to ensure responders are well-trained on the guidelines for identifying and responding to inappropriate chats in order to minimize any potential discomfort or harm.

Dr. Michelle Munro-Kramer:

Some chatters were actually engaging in an inappropriate way, so what do we mean by inappropriate chats or in the case of call or telephone-based hotlines, inappropriate calls and what do they entail? This was actually really tricky for our research team to identify, but overall, we identified these interactions as those that often included really obscene or graphic language that seemed to be pranks where somebody was trying to elicit a response or that sometimes seemed suspicious and that there might’ve been another motive in that the chatter was actually trying to get some sort of reaction or maybe even fulfill some sort of fantasy out of the call. And so one of the conclusions we came to about these inappropriate chats is it’s really helpful to be able to document them, to share that information with colleagues with a superior so that if there is some sort of pattern of inappropriate chatting from someone that really could be identified and used as both a training and teaching mechanism, as well as to talk about really how to respond to if that chat continued.

When we think about why someone might engage in an inappropriate way, there really isn’t that much evidence or data to support why this is occurring with a web or chat-based hotline that is serving survivors of trauma. We know individuals engage in inappropriate ways in many online venues and often do that again because of really their own motives to fulfill some sort of prank or fantasy or something of that nature. But evidence specifically related to sexual assault chat or web-based hotlines is really lacking at this time. We also thought a lot about not prematurely judging a chat. Individuals use different language. They have different emotions when processing a trauma, and so someone’s graphic language could be really them processing the trauma and describing what happened. If someone does start to use language or describe a situation that might be seen as inappropriate where they’re providing a lot of graphic details or using graphic language, starting to set some boundaries around that, so reminding them that this is a chat to help support them and identify resources that they may need, but that you don’t necessarily have to kind of relive that whole story of the trauma.

Oftentimes this could be helpful and kind of differentiating someone who might just be using their preferred language and then they kind of adjust that in response to what the hotline responder suggested versus someone who is really engaging in inappropriate chat, they would often continue with the graphic language or the obscene story and not respect the boundaries placed by the responder. In those cases, it really becomes important to think about how to then handle that call moving forward. We’ll talk a little bit more about that that later, but the important thing to recognize is that most individuals engaging with support services for sexual assault are doing so because they have experienced a trauma and it is very few individuals, in fact that would be engaging with these resources in an inappropriate way, but still something that is important to consider and have training for any hotline responders and volunteers.

Voiceover:

It is important to provide hotline responders with adequate training on how to detect graphic or abusive content, as well as how to recognize inauthentic chat patterns. It is also imperative for agencies to provide time for responders to debrief and process after a difficult interaction, particularly because many hotline responders are survivors of sexual violence and may be triggered by the chatter’s abuse.

Dr. Michelle Munro-Kramer:

As we close out our discussion on thinking about inappropriate chatters, it’s really helpful to consider what we can do to help prepare and train our hotline responders to safely end calls or chats that they believe may be inappropriate. Again, the first step is always going into these calls and chats with the belief that survivors are truly there to seek support and services, and so really that warm opening and providing redirection and boundaries as needed throughout the chat. If a chatter continues to not respond to those boundaries or might respond initially and then goes back to an obscene story or a graphic language, is important to let them know before you actually end the chat. Depending on how the chat has gone, you might want to check in or just provide additional resources in case the individual truly does need some additional support or resources, and then do some sort of closing.

So thank you for reaching out today. I’m going to end our chat. Here are some additional resources you can use, but it is very important to let the chatter know that the chat is ending and not to just stop it without any communication. The other thing to think about is how to protect the responder. So in some ways, we can’t always protect. We can prepare responders, we can do training, but if this type of situation happens, someone might still have a lot of emotions and need to do some processing from this type of chat. So the training and learning how to set boundaries, how to close these chats is very important. But the additional piece is really having a robust system to support the hotline responders in any way they can experience vicarious trauma from hearing a story that might have been similar to theirs or someone they know.

And so I think debriefing and talking about healthy coping is essential to the longevity of any type of responses, both telephone based as well as web and chat based. So with debriefing, if someone has indicated that they did have a call or chat that was inappropriate, then it would really be necessary to check in with them about that, to talk about what happened, how they handled it, how they’re feeling, and if they maybe need a moment before they’re able to volunteer or staff the chat line again. The other thing would be talking with them about what they do to take care of themselves. Are they engaging in coping mechanisms that help them feel their best? So really trying to identify what best supports the volunteer at that time. And so careful documentation about these inappropriate chats can be really helpful for one training, letting the volunteers and hotline responders know what to expect, but also for trying to prevent these types of inappropriate chats and potentially identifying how people are using this resource in an inappropriate way overall. Again, hotline hotlines for sexual assault, whether they be telephone-based, web or chat-based that are there to support survivors, and we really want to think about how to keep those as a safe welcoming environments for anyone that may need them.

Voiceover:

In this video, we discussed some strategies that can be used to help transition to a web or text-based hotline. We also heard from Dr. Moylan, Dr. Munro-Kramer and Logan Forrester about what inappropriate chatter entails and how responders and supervisors can act accordingly to protect themselves from vicarious trauma hotlines in any format, continue to be a valuable resource for survivors, and we hope this information will aid you in the development of more trauma-informed and survivor-centered practices within hotlines.