The Child, Youth and Family Crisis Line is a new 24/7 telephone service for children, youth and families in Eastern Ontario who are experiencing a crisis. The service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and is provided in both official languages.
The Child, Youth and Family Crisis Line for Eastern Ontario is the entry point to a unique crisis support and intervention service for the region — the Eastern Ontario Integrated Crisis Response (ICR) Service.
When people contact the Crisis Line, they are also accessing a region-wide network of organizations who serve children and youth. This means that when people phone the Crisis Line, they will reach professionals who can also refer them to other appropriate organizations in their community.
The Crisis Line is made possible through the partnership of nine major child and youth services and agencies in Eastern Ontario:
The Crisis Line is designed to provide immediate professional support and possible intervention to help children and youth — aged 18 and under — who are experiencing a crisis. It is also a support service for the families of children and youth in crisis.
Young people themselves are encouraged to call the line, as are parents, guardians, caregivers, friends and service providers (including teachers and medical professionals) who are concerned that a young person is in crisis and needs help.
When people call the Crisis Line, they will reach a trained and caring crisis professional with the specialized expertise to help young people in crisis and their families.
The Crisis Line is designed to serve clients in the following areas/counties in Eastern Ontario:
Certainly, during normal business hours, young people and concerned adults can contact a support agency in their community. They may already have a relationship with a community service provider or be aware of the organization.
The Crisis Line is available 24 hours a day, seven days or week, providing a point of contact outside normal business hours, when an agency in the community may not be staffed.
All the partner agencies in the Crisis Line have recorded voice messages directing callers to call the Crisis Line during the evenings and weekends.
The Child, Youth and Family Crisis Line for Eastern Ontario is unique in the following ways:
The partners in the Crisis Line believe that the clients should be the ones to define a “crisis”. It is important not to narrowly define the meaning of a crisis because young people may need crisis support for many reasons.
Children and teenagers who feel distressed, scared, sad or otherwise overwhelmed should call for help.
Parents, caregivers and professionals are encouraged to call if they are concerned that a young people seems depressed or anxious, or is showing other signs of struggling to cope.
Parents who feel they are overwhelmed with concerns about their child are also encouraged to call.
The professional who will answer the Crisis Line has the training, expertise and connections with partners, to determine the most appropriate course of action.
Help can take many forms, depending on the nature of the crisis. The crisis professional will work with the young person or adult to develop a response that will deal with both immediate and longer-term needs. Help may include:
The partnership behind the Crisis Line and the ICR Service creates a strong and effective community-based crisis program for young people and their families across Eastern Ontario.
The ICR Service enables all the agencies providing mental health services to work more closely together for the benefit of the children, youth and families they serve.
The Crisis Line is much more than a telephone line. It is linked to a computerized information system and database that enhance decision-making and information-sharing among all the partners. The technology provides additional support to allow all the agencies to work together to respond in the best way to crisis situations.
The Eastern Ontario ICR Service is also more than technology. The partner agencies which provide crisis services to young people and their families have come together in an unprecedented way to improve services across the region. This integration and coordination will provide a number of benefits to the clients, the service providers and other service providers in the community.
The Crisis Line and the ICR is an accessible and responsive service to children/youth and t heir families. The crisis line can be used in the home, school and the community during outside normal hours, including weekends.
The Child, Youth and Family Crisis Line for Eastern Ontario is supported by the Ontario Ministry of Finance Strengthening Our Partnerships (SOP) Initiative, as well as by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services
The SOP initiative was announced in the 2003 Ontario budget. The goals of the Initiative are to improve client service, increase efficiency and strengthen partnerships among provincially-funded agencies. The SOP funding supported development of the technology behind the Crisis Line and other supports to allow the integration of crisis response services in Eastern Ontario.
The partners of the Child, Youth and Family Crisis Line of Eastern Ontario have developed a Privacy Policy which reflects their commitment to protection of the personal information of all clients.
The policy states that the partners will comply with all relevant privacy legislation related to the collection, use and disclosure of personal information, including personal health information. The legislation includes the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA), the Child and Family Services Act (CSFA) and the personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
Beyond the statutory requirements, the Crisis Line Privacy Policy commits the partners to the highest ethical standards in the collection, use and disclosure of personal information.
The Crisis Line is committed to providing the highest quality services to our clients. To ensure quality and suitability of services, it is necessary to gather and use some personal information.
The Crisis Line adheres to a number of guiding principles to protect the privacy of personal information and the confidentiality of the services provided to our clients. Complete details on these principles are available in the Privacy Policy.
Key guiding principles include:
The Crisis Line professionals will identify the purposes for which personal information is collected, used or disclosed, prior to or at the time of the collection. This may be done orally or in writing.
For example, when a young person or adult contacts the Crisis Line, we will ask for the appropriate amount of personal information which will allow us to assess the person’s needs and if required, to refer them to other helping resources.
Consent is required for the collection of personal information and the subsequent use or disclosure of this information.
When people call Crisis Lines and identify themselves as seeking help, there is “assumed consent” on the part of the client for use of their information. By reaching out, they have, in essence, given their consent for information use. However, above and beyond this assumption, the crisis professionals who will take the calls will, wherever possible, explain the purposes of the information collection, so that the client can reasonably understand how the information will be used or disclosed.
Consent may be recorded orally during the course of a crisis call. This will normally be followed up with written consent.
In certain circumstances, a service will not be provided if the client refuses to consent to the collection of personal information.
Personal information will not be used or disclosed for purposes other than those for which it was originally collected, except with the consent of the individual or as required by law.
The Crisis Line is committed to safeguarding personal information from unauthorized access, unintentional disclosure or theft regardless of the format in which it is held. The new Integrated Crisis Response (ICR) Service computerized system includes a number of technological security measures including passwords, encryption, firewalls and access controls.
Additionally, service agreements are in place with all partners in the Crisis Line to ensure appropriate safeguards for privacy and confidentiality when information is shared. All the agencies have agreed upon the principles, policies and guidelines that are protecting information.
Information will be shared among agencies and service providers as required to provide the most effective and appropriate services for each client.
Broadly speaking, the Crisis Line and the ICR Service provide enhanced crisis services for children, youth and their families. “Enhanced” means that the response to crises will be quicker, more appropriate and more effective across Eastern Ontario.
Best practices in the delivery of mental health services, including crisis services, demonstrate that an integrated delivery system has many advantages compared to systems in which agencies are operating separately. Young people and their families will benefit, as will the agencies that deliver crisis services and other service providers in the community who come into contact with young people in crisis.
One of the key benefits to clients is increased access to crisis supports and services.
Access is improved because the Crisis Line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, the Crisis Line creates even access to crisis services across the region. Before creation of the Crisis Line, some young people and families in Eastern Ontario had limited access to professional crisis services in their community outside normal business hours. This was particularly true in rural communities.
In addition, some agencies in the region cannot, on their own, provide the full range of crisis services that are made available through this integration of crisis response. By working together, the organizations are able to increase the availability of around-the-clock crisis services throughout the region.
Having a single telephone number to call in cases of crisis gets rid of the confusion that clients might have had about who to contact and simplifies the process of accessing crisis resources and services.
In the past, the onus was put on the public and other external service providers to determine which agency was most appropriate to contact for an imminent crisis. Now, with the Crisis Line, both clients and other service providers know that calling this telephone number, will give them access to immediate help, if required, as well as to an established network of available regional programs and services.
The 24/7 availability of the Crisis Line also means that young people and their families who need immediate help can reach a crisis professional at any time. Agencies can respond to urgent situations more quickly and appropriately.
Clients will receive a high quality of care through this new service. Trained, experienced crisis professionals will be on hand at all times to assess both the immediate needs of clients and the longer-term services that will provide benefit. By working together, the partner agencies will be able to provide a broader range of crisis and other mental health services to their clients. Clients will benefit from the greater information-sharing and coordination among agencies.
The agencies in the partnership ultimately benefit when their clients benefit: they are better able to fulfill their mandate and help their clients with this 24/7 integrated crisis response service.
Agencies who serve young people and their families will be better able to coordinate their response to client needs, strengthening the effectiveness of this community-based crisis program.
Greater coordination yields a number of benefits:
Through an integrated community-based crisis program, the agencies also work together to define service delivery policies and standards and jointly manage ongoing service delivery. The result is more effective agencies and a stronger region-wide crisis response system.
For example: if an agency in one community is concerned that a young person is at risk of hitting a crisis point, the agency can share information about that client with the Crisis Line professionals. If that young person ends up calling the Crisis Line during off-business hours, the crisis professionals handling the calls will already have vital information about that person. This will enhance the effectiveness of their response.
This coordination also improves the efficiency of service delivery. Future developments of this partnership will encourage; improved communications, innovation and more cost effective services.
The new system is designed to decrease the number of crisis calls to police and visits to hospitals.
Clients in crisis who don’t have access to 24/7 crisis support frequently contact police or go to hospitals, when they are not in physical danger or facing a medical emergency. They may feel they have nowhere else to turn but what they really need is the support of a crisis professional.
Regional wide access to a short term crisis bed through a single point of call.
The Crisis Line provides a real opportunity to ease the burden on these other service providers.
For example: The Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa’s figures for April 1 2006 to February 6, 2007 show that 58% of the calls to the Mobile Crisis Line averted the possible involvement of other intensive service providers.
Another example: The London Mental Health Crisis Service is an integrated service that provides direct response alternatives to hospital emergency care. In a client survey conducted from 1999 to 2000, 48% of clients reported that a hospital visit would have been a choice if the service had not been available.
Region wide, police and hospitals can access/refer to the ICR to provide a single point of entry to the crisis services.
The technology behind the Crisis Line supports collaboration and sharing of information among the partners of the regional crisis response system — which ultimately leads to higher quality service.
Previously, individual agencies would collect and maintain their own data. The new system can centrally track, manage, analyze and control data collection for all crisis contacts across the region.
This will allow assessment of the performance of the Crisis Line but more importantly, assessment of the region’s performance for responding to a crisis. This can lead to action plans to identify and resolve service gaps and make service improvements at local and regional levels.
The new common database and crisis case management application offer a number of benefits:
When you have come into contact with a young person whom you believe is in crisis or is at risk of experiencing a crisis.
When a young person or a concerned adult (on behalf of a young person) contacts you for help, and you believe that they would be best served by a crisis professional rather than emergency or hospital services.
Don’t hesitate to call, even if you are not entirely sure about the intensity of the crisis. The trained crisis professionals who answer calls to the Crisis Line have the knowledge to determine the best response.
You can access the ICR Service by calling the Crisis Line directly.
It is also possible to access the service using a Crisis Alert process which is currently under development. This is to include a provision for making referrals through a Web portal.
Getting the individual to make the call to the Crisis Line directly is the preferred course of action.
You should encourage the young person to call the Crisis Line directly in order to access support. If you are with the young person and they would feel more comfortable with you making the initial phone call, you may call the Crisis Line directly. If you make the call for the young person, you will be encouraged to and supported in getting the young person to take the call and talk directly with the crisis worker.
If the young person is in crisis and unwilling to contact the Crisis Line directly you may call the Crisis Line and get support on how you might assist the young person. Gathering as much information around the crisis will assist the crisis workers in making the most appropriate referral and providing the most appropriate support.
The Prescott-Russell Services to Children and Adults is an agency that provides a single access point to a multitude of services, including psychosocial intervention, educational and support groups, alternative living environments, community integration activities, skill development, children and adults protection services, specialized services, etc. The PRSCA promote social and community integration, valued social roles, the quest for excellence and expeditiousness, professional services and much more. The PRSCA’s mission is to be of service to vulnerable persons in Prescott-Russell by supporting them within their family and community so that they daily experience a good life.
The PRSCA provide services throughout Prescott-Russell to children and teenagers who are physically and mentally challenged, parents in need of coaching, children and adults in need of protection, adults living with a mental handicap and any individual seeking information and programs and services available in Prescott-Russell.
Every call made to the Crisis Line of Eastern Ontario, of which the first three numbers of the caller’s phone number correspond to a Prescott-Russell phone number, will be automatically transferred to the PRSCA’s 24/7 emergency line. A qualified worker is always available to take calls and to go meet the caller or the person in crisis, if needed. The PRSCA also offer a mobile intervention program. The mandate of the program’s social intervention workers is to intervene quickly in a crisis situation or suicidal distress. Through their training and experience, the workers can support individuals in crisis. The workers assess the individual’s distress level and make related recommendations.
