CANADA - KIDS HELP PHONE COUNSELLORS

You guys remember Kids Help Phone, right? I can't remember if there were any commercials on TV, but I do remember the advertisements on the milk cartons in elementary school. Anyways, last year some two million calls and web messages were handled by the charity. But maybe you've wondered about the people on the other end of the line and what kind of messed up stories they hear? We're talking about people whose job it is to listen to some of the most depressing shit you can imagine, not to mention the type of lame prank calls only a 13-year-old could enjoy. How these people do not end up throwing bricks through glass doors and shit, I do not know. Interviews after the jump.

Name: Dilys
Age: 33
Years at Kids Help Phone: 4 (FT)

Can you tell me a little bit about the work you were doing before coming to Kids Help Phone?

Before being here, I was at an organization called The Child Development Institute. I did leadership training exercises and life skills workshops with girls between the ages of 12 and 18.

Based on some of the stats I'm reading off the website, it says about 1/3 of callers are described as "kids at risk" whereas 2/3 of the kids that call in are well functioning. How quickly can you determine what type of caller you're dealing with?

Sometimes it's really hard. You might think you can tell within a couple of seconds, but really every kid who calls in is totally unique. We might get 40 minutes into a call talking about an average kind of relationship problem, a breakup or best friends fighting, and suddenly… Or I remember taking a phone call from a girl who picked up the phone and just the first words out of her mouth were 'I'm FAS.' You know, 'I have fetal alcohol syndrome', and you know, 'I'm being abused.'

What's the single most difficult aspect of your job? How do you define a good day versus a bad day?

You can have a shift where you take a lot of pranks, or where you take a lot of calls from kids who are really stuck, and you hear a lot of heartache. You have to be prepared in this job to hear a lot of difficult things, and you need to be really on top of your game in terms of self-care, because there is a danger that you absorb some of that stuff. You need to be very good at letting it go and doing some healthy compartmentalizing so that you can go home at night and, you know, still enjoy your life.

Describe the hardest call you've ever had to take. Is there a call you've had that has stayed with you?

Absolutely, and we've all got one. Right now two of them are competing in my head. I'm going to tell you about them both if that's OK?

Please. Yeah, absolutely.

The one call that I think has been hardest for me to shake happened pretty early in my career here. I was working nights. I got a call from a young lady who was obviously in crisis and distress, but there was something very funny about her voice. Like her tone was not matching what she was talking about. She was talking about a long standing problem with sexual abuse and incest in her home. She was talking about self harming. She had a drug addiction. Like multi-layered, a lot of terrible things going on. And as the call progressed, it was the middle of the night, and she was at risk of suicide but she wasn't prepared to call 911 with me. As we talked I was trying to find out who else was home, who else were the people in her life that maybe we could bring in to this. We're talking about that and I heard something funny and just said 'By the way, where are you in your house?' She said 'oh I'm in the bathroom.' Immediately I get a little bit more nervous because she's been talking about suiciding. She was saying, you know, 'I think I'm really going to do it,' and we kept talking and I just wasn't sure if I had heard her dish out some pills. I wasn't sure. I checked in with her about it. 'No no, I haven't taken anything.' And I would say to her I want to trust you right now, but I'm kind of getting nervous that maybe something else is going on. At the end of the call I heard what sounded like somebody fall to the ground. And there was nothing on the other end of the phone. So there I am, I don't have her identifying information, I don't have anything to go on in terms of I can't get an ambulance there, I don't know where to send it. And I was left with not knowing if this girl was alright. Did she hang up on me? I don't hear a dial tone. Is she going to be OK? If she took those pills, is she going to wake up on not? And that was a very difficult call because when we put down the phone, we've got no idea. Did this help, did this not help? It's very rare that a kid calls back and says 'thanks, I'm OK.' Do you want to hear about the other call? Like, I don't have to tell you.

I'd love to hear about the other call.

Oh, you would?

Well, it's difficult to hear about…but yeah.

I received a phone call once from a kid who was very guarded. This kid wasn't giving me any information about himself. He wouldn't give me a first name, he made up a pseudonym for himself, wouldn't tell me his age, nothing. No province, nothing. He called to talk about his plan to go into school the next day with a gun that he had acquired and shoot some people. That's a topic that cuts at the hearts of people in Toronto and all over North America. It was obviously a very stressful call for me. When you're on the phone with a kid you've got to make it all about that kid. And I have to admit, when we started talking about this, like, my palms started sweating, my heart was racing, this was like, 'holy man' this could be catastrophic,and I felt a lot of pressure. We talked a lot, and explored why he was feeling that way. What it came down to in that case was bullying, really long-term bullying. And again, one of those problems that starts there and just fans out into every aspect of this kids life. It affected his physical health, it affected his mental health, there were problems with family. He was dealing with a lot of abuse issues. Sometimes you get a call like that and you think, 'where do I start? This is so big.' I remember this call because it was probably the hardest call I've ever taken and also the most gratifying. When we had talked about almost everything I still didn't want to get off the phone, but I realized that I couldn't stay on the phone just to make myself feel better. I said to him, 'we've really talked about a lot. How do you feel about what we talked about? Has you plan changed? Is anything changed? Has this been a good experience?' And I will never forget him saying 'you've given me a lot to think about, and the only thing I can say tonight is I'm going to give it one more day to think.'

How do you gauge success at your job?

You sort of do this shift where you stop thinking about product and you think more about process. I'm just one point, one little tiny dot on this kids journey, and success is all about what happened during our interaction. I don't usually get to know what happens next, so you have to find a way to be OK with just keeping it down to 'am I OK with what happened during this call.'

Name: Chester
Age: 47
Years at Kids Help Phone: Almost 2 (FT)

Can you tell me a little but about the work you were doing before joining Kids Help Phone?

I'd been working in the social service industry for close to 18 years prior to coming to Kids Help Phone. Most of my work was in Toronto in children's mental health working predominately with adolescents.

How often do you get the prank calls?

Prior to being a manager for about 14 months I was an overnight counselor full-time, so I got a full diet of those calls.

How did you deal with those?

I have a tremendous amount of patience. I absolutely love working with teens. My first shift of my cycle was Saturday. Saturday was insane. So for my first three, four hours, that's what I was expecting to get. I would say 90 per cent of the time I was totally cool with handling them. Yeah, some of them got the better of me but for the most part I try to be professional, try to turn them into educational phone calls, try to have some humour where humour was appropriate. I actually look forward to those calls.

Describe the hardest call you've ever had to take. Is there one that comes to mind?

No (laughs) it really doesn't. I guess having done this for a while I've kind of trained my mind to, as much as I can, let stuff pass through me. I have my own rituals at the end of every call, at the end of every shift. I mean I'd be lying if I said stuff doesn't affect me and I don't take it home, but I really work hard at decompressing as much as I can.

What's decompression for you?

For me it's talking almost immediately after a really challenging call. For me talking about stuff kind of puts it out there. It takes it out of me and kind of leaves it someplace else. I do other self-care stuff on my own personal time that I think also helps. I do a lot of visualization, a lot of meditation. I'm an avid cyclist, so yesterday I went out for a four hour bike ride. I think that's all part of my own self-therapy and letting stuff pass through me.

What's the longest call you've ever taken?

Oh god. I love to talk. My longest call…an hour and forty five minutes.

Name: Aren
Age: 56
Years at Kids Help Phone: 8 1/2 (FT)

Can you tell me a little bit about the work you were doing before joining Kids Help Phone?

I used to, a long time ago in Holland, work in a socio-therapeutic center with families to try and get them more comfortable in their parenting roles. And that was usually families that experienced a lot of violence and abuse, and this was a last chance for them to keep their kids, because if they would not take advantage of the program then the children would be taken into care. So I did that for quite a while. Then I came to Canada, and raised my kids, and then I started to get back into the same field again.

What is the single most difficult aspect of your job? What defines a good day for you and what defines a bad day?

A good day is when during the call the young person says 'now I know what I need to do. I've told you what my issue is, we've talked about that. I have made up my own mind.' Because Kids Help Phone doesn't tell kids what to do, that's not what we do. We support them, we give them enough time to vent, to cry, to say what they need to say, and then they will decide when they are ready to start some problem solving. When that works well, they're empowered. That makes for really good calls.

What makes for a bad day then?

A bad day is if there are quite a few pranks. That can wear me down.

How do you deal with those calls?

We let them know that they are holding up an important line. I always let them know 'you know what guys, while you are doing this someone who really needed us might not have been able to get through.' And more often than not you hear 'oh I'm sorry, Miss' and they let you go. But that doesn't always happen. So there are days when you think 'OK, please let there be at least one call or one post that I really could sink my teeth in'.

Describe the hardest call you've ever had to take.

It was a 13-year-old boy, who started off the call, as soon as I picked up and identified myself, burst out in tears. And that's unusual for a boy. Usually you hear their voice changing, but to burst out in tears doesn't happen often. After he calmed down, and I gave him plenty of time, I said 'I'm glad you called.' I let him realize that this is fine, this is all part of a good call. He said 'I can't take it anymore.' He was living in a family of horrific abuse, and his mother was not able to really help him. I still remember the voice in which he talked. He sounded broken, totally broken. And that doesn't happen often. Very often there is a sense of resiliency there. This boy was broken, that's the only way I can put it. The call was almost two hours. That was another thing that I was really happy about; that I could stay with him for two hours. And at one point he said 'well, you want me to hang up now.' And I said 'no, I'm with you as long as you need me. You can hang up any time.' I remember that because that really affected me very, very deeply. After that call I was of course tired, but I was also touched deeply. The end of the call though, the last 20 minutes were spent with social services, because Kids Help Phone can do a three-way call. So within that time, he was ready to say 'I want you to phone, but I don't know if I'm going to say anything.' I said that's OK. You can hang up. You're in charge here. And that is a real special part that Kids Help Phone has. We're not making decisions unless they say 'yes, call social services.' Otherwise it won't happen. At the end of the call, he came into the conversation, the boy. This happened about a year ago, and at that point I said 'how are you doing?' And he said 'I'm OK. You can go now.' It was a very, very long call and a very emotional call. And it really affected me. During the first hour of the call I thought I can't do anything, all I can do is be here for him, but it ended reasonably well. That's one call that I think back to and I wonder where he is right now?

What do you do to relieve some of the pressures of working here?

Sometimes I walk around a bit. Sometimes I just talk about the call. After work, going out for dinner, seeing a movie, reading, being with my husband and my kids. Not taking the phone, not emails…I don't go on the phone or emails at home.

Name: Shannon
Age: 31
Years at Kids Help Phone: 2 ¬Ω years (FT)

What were you doing before coming to Kids Help Phone?

I worked for Katimavik for a year as a project leader.

What the difference between working evenings and overnights?

The calls on the overnights are a lot heavier.

What's the single most difficult aspect of your job?

Um, I think not knowing what is happening to kids. Like, there's no real follow-up. So, because we're dealing with crisis,  we generally don't get a lot of kids who call back. Especially on the evenings.

Tell me about your hardest call.

There's one that sticks in my mind, and I think it will probably stick in my mind for a long time. Just because the strength that this girl displayed was just incredible. She had dealt with a lot of abuse at home her entire life, and she had just called child protection services on her parents. Her younger brothers and sisters were taken from the home, and she had been taking car of them because her mother was too depressed to basically get off the couch and do what was involved as a mother. The father was abusive towards all of the kids. So she ended up calling child protection and the kids were taken away. Except she was too old to go under the care of child protection, so it was just devastating for her to have to see them go and for her to have to stay there and feel like she had no other options. We talked about calling 911 when she wasn't feeling safe and she didn't feel comfortable doing that. What I was there for, my role in that call, was to be a listening ear, and let her know that someone out there cared. She was just dealing with so much. It was tough because I don't know what happened after that.

You're the youngest person I've interviewed. Do the problems that kids are calling in with today resonate with you?

I can definitely relate to the temperamental teenager who would call and say 'I hate everyone' and 'nobody understands me.' I remember, really clearly, that that was how I felt when I was growing up.

How do you deal with prank calls?

I'll start by saying 'hi guys, what's going on here?' They might tell me their made-up story, and I'll treat it like an actual call. Like if there's a kid calling  and saying 'Hi! I'm 13 and pregnant,' then I'll treat that like an actual call. If I keep asking them questions, after a while they're going to say 'Oh my God, I don't know what to do with this,' like, they haven't thought their prank through well enough to give the answers I need to help them more.

Is there another answer for what you would like to do?

[Laughs] What I would like to do? Well, it depends if kids are being abusive or not. Like if they're swearing at me and calling me names and stuff like that, then that's not called for and I'd hang up. Sometime I just play with them too. Like if they call up and say 'I'd like to order a pizza' then I'll just say OK, what do you want on it? Shoelaces?

What's the hardest type of call to deal with? Is it easier to talk to somebody about drugs or alcohol than it is to talk about sexual abuse?

It depends on our experience. I'm trained in counseling women and children who've been abused or who are dealing with abuse. So that's one thing that I know really well. Even before a kid will disclose abuse, especially sexual abuse, I know pretty much that they're going to, right off the bat.

How?

They tend to be a lot quieter, they're not really giving me much information about themselves, they're really shy, not talking a lot. I feel like I'm doing all the work. Once I show them that I'm sticking with them and that I'm not going to hang up on them because they're not talking, then after a little bit of coaxing they'll start to feel a little more comfortable, and open up. Sometimes they'll even say something about their father, or their uncle, or their mother, or someone down the street, or whatever. They'll just drop hints, and I'll take a guess, and they'll say 'Yeah, actually. How did you know?'

By Paul Johnston

Photos: Dave Gillespie