In search of more help, Grapevine Center Warmline workers share experience
Robyn DiCola’s job involves talking to people on the phone for three hours Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but really she does a lot more listening.
Her job is to dial the number of people who have requested to talk to staff from the Grapevine Center in Butler, but she said that once she gets someone on the phone, she normally lets them do most of the talking.
“It's just a check-in call, we see how they're doing, how they're feeling,” DiCola said. “I just try to reflect on their feeling, whatever the baseline feeling is,” DiCola said. “You try to pick up on what it is they're feeling and reflect it back to them. It's called reflective listening.”
DiCola has worked the phones, known as the Warmline, for five of the seven years she has been employed by the Grapevine Center, a recovery program center on North Elm Street. She is one of only a few callers now, which has led the Grapevine Center to reduce the number of days the program is available from seven days a week to five.
Dee Fields, fiscal assistant for the Grapevine Center, said the Warmline has lost some staffers recently. However, it could go back to its seven days a week schedule if the Grapevine Center hired more part-timers.
“Just recently we've had quite a problem getting anybody,” she said of Warmline staff. “We don't actually get any money toward this service but it's so necessary and so valuable.”
On Wednesday, Sept. 9, DiCola worked the Warmline alongside 20-year veteran of the line Bill Linthurst. DiCola said it’s ideal for two people to cover the 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Warmline shift, so the people they call can have their full 15 minutes uninterrupted.
Calls from the Warmline can last up to 15 minutes, and each caller is allowed to have two calls per night. Not all of them use that, but some of them want their two calls, according to DiCola. People get on the call list by first calling the Grapevine Center and asking to be put on the list.
The calls are mainly just check ins, Linthurst said, for people who want someone to talk to for their mental well-being. He explained that everyone who staffs the Warmline gets a little training, but just so they are prepared for some of the conversations people want to have on the line.
He also emphasized that the Warmline operators are not counselors, but just people to speak with.
“We are all HIPPA certified — we are not licensed counselors but we are trained,” Linthurst said.
“The point is to keep it reasonable,” Linthurst continued. “We’re here to listen as well, that’s why we have a two-person crew. We want to keep that person on the line.”
DiCola said there are a little over 30 people on the call list, so when there are two people working a night, they can each make about 15 calls. Fields said the Warmline makes up to 817 calls per month, and has had 8,063 calls in a year.
“June this year was the lowest, 594 calls,” Fields said.
The Warmline call center is an office with two phone lines that operators use to make their calls. Linthurst’s phone has a cord that is tangled and looped from years of use. The two operators took some notes as they were on the calls Sept. 9, so they could keep up with what the person on the other end of the line was saying.
DiCola said most of the calls she makes end up being casual chats. She said she hears people go through changes the longer she talks to them, even over the course of just one phone call. It’s a job that she trained for just by being listening, although her experience working a crisis line while in college comes in handy, too.
“People just want to be heard, they just want someone to care,” DiCola said. “If you enjoy chatting with people and providing companionship for people, it's a nice way to be involved in your community and just helping out and getting to know people.”
Fields said suicide rates go down when there are resources people can turn to when in need. The Warmline is one of those resources not just for people of Butler, but for people from around the nation, with DiCola commenting that there are people on the list who live in Florida.
“Loneliness is probably the biggest problem out there, and that is one of the biggest exacerbator of mental health,” Fields said. “People can call when they're lonely, stressed, overwhelmed and sometimes they just need somebody to listen.
Bette Peoples, executive director of the Grapevine Center, said the center is funded by Butler County, so she and the administrators of the center want to add more names to the call list. The Grapevine Center has a toll-free number, too. The Warmline is part of the drop-in center contract, Peoples said.
Although the Warmline lets callers be anonymous, Peoples said the operators ask for a little background information, just to get demographic data.
“We do take short notes so we know how many people are called, where they might live for the ZIP codes and approximately the age,” Peoples said. “We try to figure out who is calling and who referred them so we have an idea of who is letting people know.”
Peoples added that individuals can work the Warmline without having prior experience in a mental health field. She said the main characteristic a person needs to work the line is the ability to listen and be a friendly voice, because as she said, many of the people on the other end of the line “don't get that many calls.”
“They're not professional counselors, they do know what to do in an emergency, they contact (Center for Community Resources), but it's meant to be supportive,” Peoples said. “We have a training, we used to have a more formal training.”
DiCola said the Warmline is a good job to work for people who like to “gab.” She said that even though it is a job, she has become attached to some of the people she regularly talks to over the phone up to three times a week.
The Warmline and the people she calls have become part of her life.
“I've gotten so close to them because they're sharing their lives with me,” DiCola said. “I send them Christmas cards, and you get to know them, you get to know their lives. I think about them, I pray for them, they're a part of my life now.”
For more information about the Warmline or the Grapevine Center, visit the center’s website at grapevinecenter.org.
