volunteering for an abuse hotline?

[peanutbutterandjelly]

Has anyone had experience volunteering at a hotline for victims of domestic abuse or something similar? One of the shelters in my town is looking for volunteers... you have to apply and take a 50 hour training course for a couple months first. I think this might be something that would make me feel good about myself, but I can also seeing it being very stressful. Does anyone have any experience or advice?

[abitbroken]

I would go through the training first and then decide. Most of the time, you are going to merely be giving callers out referrals to counseling, services and shelters. You will not be called in the middle of a fight going on etc, in hopes you will referee it, most likely. You are not behaving as law enforcement or a 911 dispatcher. The most dramatic thing might be you staying on the phone with someone for a bit. I had a friend in an abusive situation and if she had someone on the phone, her boyfriend wouldn't do anything to her because he was embarrassed to have others hear. I was on the phone with her quietly until she was able to walk out the door and into her car and made sure she had enough gas and then we ended the call.

[In the Dark]

Good luck with going head with it.

I don't think I would even be able to do it.

 

Their distraught voices would be there even when I am trying to sleep.

[Batya33]

I would do it only if the focus was on making a contribution to your community in this particular way -not if the focus was to feel good about yourself. That might be a consequence but I don't think it will be sufficient motivation to complete 50 hours of training plus put in the volunteer time required.

[peanutbutterandjelly]

I wanted to do it because I thought it would be good to have this kind of phone training and it might help me get a job in the future. Also, it would give me more experience working with the public and in stressful situations.

[OptomisticGirl]

I think it would be good also because of your other thread and what you have recently went through. I never did an abuse hotline but my fiance was a Samaritan for years (it's kind of like an abuse hotline thing in the UK, only it's for suicide, abuse, if you just don't have anyone else to talk to) and you really have to have a thick skin for it I believe.

[peanutbutterandjelly]

I figure I can at least go through the training and see how I feel, but I would feel bad if afterwards I found out that I wasn't cut out for it and didnt continue with the volunteering.

[teabee]

I did that. I think it was 110 hours of training, and when I passed training I signed a year contract to work the crisis phone lines. I don't want to turn you off to the idea because maybe it's the kind of thing you'd like, but I hated it. So much. I rejoiced like I was free from prison when I finished my contract.

 

I like that I did it and it's over. It's under my belt, and I can put it on resumes and get references. Unfortunately I've kind of headed into a different arena since, and I don't think it's much of an asset for where I'm going. I liked the rewarding feeling after the call ends and the caller has gained a lot of insight and feels relieved and empowered. There were calls like that on every shift, for the most part, but it just wasn't motivation enough for me in the end. I remember how tense I was during the length of every shift, and I'd always jump when the phone rang and then answer with a feeling of dread... ugh! Crises are not for me.

 

I didn't like the prank calls (often sexual in nature), I didn't like the dependent, repeat-callers, I didn't like hopeless-helpless callers, I didn't like the creepy callers, I didn't like the abusive callers.

 

I didn't like how much pressure there was from the organization. They had everything so structured that it wasn't even practical for every call. It made it hard for me as the listener and the caller didn't always get what they were looking for. For instance we were supposed to keep the calls to about 20 min each, and move each call through a specific structure, so if someone was calling and needing to talk at length about an issue, it felt like we always had to interrupt long before they were ready and move things along to something else because it was required. It felt unnatural, like, "Yeah yeah yeah, I think I have enough details. Let's move onto the next part of the sheet that I am looking at because I am forced to make your call conform to the call-sheet I am writing on." The organization had a lot of rules AND they monitored and reviewed your calls. We had to jump in and inquire about every vague statement that could be alluding to abuse or suicide, which is understandable, but what was annoying was that if there was any hint of that, we then had to make the call ALL about it (with questions we had to ask and sheets we were required to fill out and everything), even if that had nothing to do with why they were calling.

 

My experience would have been a lot better if there wasn't as much pressure from the organization itself. I'd rather have taken all those calls without being monitored and just had real conversations instead of forcing every single call into a structured template. It was stressful, mainly because of that, but your organization might not necessarily be like that.

[abitbroken]

No every group has time limits per call. Every org is different. So you just have to go into it and learn what they expect.

[peanutbutterandjelly]

thanks for your post teabee, i wasn't even thinking about half of those things. I have no idea if you have to sign a year contract, but I assume you have to agree to volunteer for a couple of months. There is a $50 fee for the training, so maybe they make money off their drop out that way lol. In all honesty, I think its a little too much for me right now, I'm more interested in the actual training, than doing the volunteering and it shouldnt be that way. I may look at it again in the future, but there are probably other less stressfull things for me to be doing while im looking for jobs. I want to volunteer while I'm unemployed, but i think this might take too much focus off the job search.

[tinkerbellkj]

I interned and then eventually worked for a rape crisis center for about a year. I did the hotline first. It was definitely a little nerve wrecking at first, but it does get better. I will say though that after a year I was extremely burnt out and I probably would not work on the line again. But, I worked full time for the agency and I was on the hotline/on call for like 28 hours a week, including weekends AND the overnight. So that had a lot to do with it.

 

The only thing I can advise is to keep your voice calm and confident. You are not a therapist (though the callers sometimes want you to be) and you really need to be in control of the call before it spirals out of control. Basically, the way we did it was to get off the phone as fast as possible with providing the most resources as possible. You really want to get the caller to feel safe and to have another option after the call, whether that be talk to a friend, go for a walk, or at best, calling a therapy provider.

 

Oh and the prank calls, as teabee said, are the absolute worst. I had a male calling while masturbating, and it was pretty disgusting.

[tinkerbellkj]

This is all great advice, you went into way more detail than I could even remember! It's been years, though since I did it.

[dali]

I've worked accross the drug/sexual abuse/homelessness field and it's tough, the other posters were right it does drain you. No amount of passion can make up for just how burnt out you feel after coming home after a tough day a work.

 

If your not very experienced in life you will see the dark side of it, it's not pretty especially sexual abuse work. After some of things you hear and see trust me your view of the world will change.