A Guide to Suicide Hotline Volunteering
After coming off a full and beautiful Suicide Awareness Month in September, we hear lots of questions about volunteering. People want to know what it takes to become a suicide hotline volunteer, what the training is like, and if they’re a good fit for the work. Here is our guide to knowing if the crisis line is a place for you.
Some of our volunteers come to SCC with a personal connection to suicide loss. They may have lost a loved one or friend to suicide and found their way to SCC through their own experience with grief. Others join because they care about their community and want to support people who are struggling.
No single background or life experience is required to volunteer on a crisis hotline. Training provides the skills and knowledge needed for the work. What’s important are a few qualities that help volunteers meet callers with care, respect, and steadiness.
If you’ve been wondering how to volunteer for a crisis hotline, these are some of the qualities we look for:
Empathy
Empathy sits at the heart of crisis line work.
Many people know how to show sympathy or express their feelings about what someone is going through, and that’s a good start. Empathy communicates an understanding of what another person is feeling or experiencing. A crisis worker does not need to have lived through the same circumstances as a caller. What matters is that the caller feels heard and understood.
Our training will teach you how to put that empathy into practice on a call.
Coachability
Working on a crisis line takes knowledge, practice, and skill. No one expects you to know everything on your first day.
Our trainers use an evidence-based curriculum with scenarios that give volunteers a chance to practice and develop their skills. You’ll make mistakes. You may say the wrong thing or take a call in a direction that doesn’t help.
That is part of learning.
Strong crisis line volunteers remain open to feedback and keep improving. The work involves serious conversations, so preparation counts. Our trainers offer guidance designed to help volunteers become thoughtful, confident crisis workers.
Respect for Every Caller
Our Dallas crisis hotline receives calls from people across the nation and from many different backgrounds and experiences
Every caller deserves to be treated with respect and without judgment. Calls involve a wide range of subjects, identities, beliefs, relationships, and circumstances. As a crisis worker, your role is to support the person who called. That means setting aside personal beliefs and opinions so you can listen and assist without judgment or prejudice.
We are an inclusive line, and we welcome calls from everyone. When people feel safe speaking openly, a more meaningful conversation becomes possible.
Commitment to Showing Up
Our center relies heavily on volunteers to staff the crisis line, and training requires a time investment from both the volunteer and SCC.
After completing training, we ask volunteers to commit to at least six months of service and one four-hour shift each week.
That commitment helps us maintain consistent coverage and ensures the time we spend training each volunteer translates into continued support for people who call. Volunteers are essential to keeping support available when someone reaches out during a difficult moment.
Our Training Gives You the Confidence
If empathy, coachability, respect, and commitment sound like qualities you already bring to the table, crisis line volunteering might be worth exploring. Also read, Volunteering on a Free Suicide Helpline —What to Expect.
The rest comes through training.
If you read through these qualities and feel you have what it takes, you can expect challenging work, plenty of learning, and the chance to support someone during a difficult point in their life. You won’t be doing it alone. Our team will be there throughout your training, and we won’t clear you to work the crisis line until you feel prepared and comfortable handling calls. The work is challenging. It is also deeply meaningful.
Your commitment is to use that training in service to the people who reach out.
Our commitment is to give you the training and support you need to do that well.
A volunteer might never know what happens after a call ends. What they do know is that, for those minutes on the phone, someone was there to listen.
If you have been looking for a way to serve people during some of their hardest moments, we would love to introduce you to crisis line volunteering at the Suicide and Crisis Center of North Texas.
Learn more about suicide hotline volunteering and find out if this role feels like a good fit for you.
If you or someone you know needs support, our 24/7 crisis line is available at (214) 828-1000.