311 answers new cries for help
Operators at the city-run hotline are used to fielding complaints about garbage pickup or potholes. Now they’re dealing with a rise in distress calls from people considering suicide
Power outages and downed tree limbs after the ice storm of 2013, residents without water for days on end following the deep freeze of 2015. These are the kind of crises that drive up calls to 311, the city hotline that typically deals with more mundane complaints, about garbage pickup, broken traffic lights and potholes. But now 311 is facing a different kind of road bump. Suicide calls to the phone line are up in the past six months, and customer service representatives are being trained to respond to the cries for help.
Gary Yorke, director of 311, attributes the influx to concerns about confidentiality.
“In the last few months there has been a dramatic increase of those calls,” says Yorke. “When you call 911, you’re forced to make an official record of (the call) and the police are dispatched. So some people don’t necessarily want that articulated.”
“We have to adapt because it’s a changing environment at any time.”
COLLETTE LENNIE 311 EMPLOYEE
Privacy has been a concern since it was revealed that non-criminal mental health records kept by police have been shared with U.S. officials, resulting in a Canadian woman being turned back at the border. Such records have also been routinely disclosed to potential employers and agencies during police background checks and vulnerable sector screenings.
The province recently proposed legislation banning the disclosure by law enforcement agencies of non-criminal mental health records, including suicide threats.
But criticism has also been levelled at police forces after numerous high-profile instances in which emergency encounters with mentally ill suspects have led to fatalities.
Yorke says depending on the seriousness of the call, suicide threats will be handled internally by 311 customer service representatives or referred to suicide hotlines.
“If they refuse to speak to 911, we will not forward that call because we will lose that individual,” says Yorke. “We will try to get any type of support mechanism and keep them on the call and keep them calm.”
The suicide calls are the latest challenge for 311, which was created in 2009 to centralize complaints from residents to six city divisions, including solid waste, transportation, water, animal services, urban forestry and municipal licensing and standards.
The city division has evolved since then in response to catastrophes such as the ice storm of 2013, which brought down tree limbs and caused widespread power outages.
This year’s deep freeze in February saw complaints about burst pipes flood into 311, accounting for nearly a quarter of total calls, which spiked by about 1,000 a day. (The agency received about 3,200 calls a day on average in 2014.)
“We have to adapt because it’s a changing environment at any time, depending on what is going on outside. It depends on the time of the year,” says Collette Lennie, a veteran city employee who transferred to the Metro Hall headquarters of 311 when the service was launched in 2009.
To respond to the suicide calls, Lennie and other customer service representatives at 311 — which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week — will receive the same training as those who answer phones at 211, the community-based information line funded by the United Way. That service usually deals with referrals to social service agencies, but operators also receive suicide calls.
It’s not known if the recent increase in calls means that suicide is on the rise, because provincewide statistics are two or three years behind.
“I think all the lines are so busy that people are just randomly calling everywhere,” says Karen Letofsky, executive director of To-
ronto Distress Centres, which operates the crisis hotline 416-408-HELP.
“But also, it’s more of an open dialogue. It doesn’t mean that the (suicide) rates have gone up. It means people are talking about it more. And probably looking for more help, which is a good sign.”
Letofsky says her agency has seen an increase in callers expressing suicidal thoughts, but that the number of high-risk calls — when counsellors would contact 911 to send paramedics or police — has remained stable.
“More people are talking about (suicidal thoughts) at an earlier stage and looking for resources, which I see as a healthy consequence of the public dialogue,” she adds.
Counsellors with the distress line have more in-depth training in suicide prevention than 211, 311 or even 911 operators, for whom suicide threats account for only a fraction of total calls.
“It’s more of an open dialogue. It doesn’t mean that the (suicide) rates have gone up. It means people are talking about it more. And probably looking for more help, which is a good sign.”
KAREN LETOFSKY
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TORONTO DISTRESS CENTRES