Men seek the write help

Surprise in callers to hotline about communication

YOUNG males are making the most calls to the nation’s literacy referral service in Geelong.

Statistics provided to the Geelong Advertiser revealed the Reading Writing Hotline also received a much higher number of calls from Geelong residents from an Englishspeaking background, compared with the national average.

Local clients have included mature-aged students and car accident victims.

Recent callers to the hotline from Geelong postcodes are: 65 per cent male; 95 per cent from an Englishspeaking background; 43 per cent left high school in year 9 or earlier; 45 per cent are aged between 25 and 44; and, 65 per cent called on behalf of themselves.

The significant differences between the Geelong postcode and the national average included people calling for themselves (44 per cent nationally) and callers from English-speaking backgrounds (77 per cent nationally).

While nationally the biggest caller demographic was young men from English speaking backgrounds who left school in year 9 or earlier, this trend was even more pronounced in Geelong.

Examples included a person who had been in a car accident and panicked when they had to write anything; they also wanted to improve their skills in writing and spelling in order to get further training.

Another client was a woman who studied community services as an adult but struggled with reading and writing as class sizes were too big and could not receive the assistance they needed.

She had spent her childhood at more than 20 schools, which affected her literacy.

The hotline sent her resources to get her started at home and them refer to a smaller literacy class to focus on her literacy.

Hotline manager Vanessa Iles said there was always a cause for people calling the hotline, which fields calls from people ranging from teens to in their 80s.

Ms Iles said young male clients often called the hotline after entering the workforce and struggling with literacy demands.

“They might be the kinds of kids who struggled at school,” she said.

“They might have been bullied, or moved around.

“And they come out of school, think they don’t need to read or write again, and then they do realise that if you’re doing manual work they still need to do literacy work.”

Ms Iles said dominant industries among callers were trades, labouring and construction, and they also fielded calls from “a lot” of truck drivers.