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With an increase in demand, Goodwill of the Finger Lakes is eyeing expansion of its 211/LIFE LINE service.
The service averages roughly 1,200 calls a month, varying by county. The chat and text features of 211 are used at a similar rate, primarily by younger individuals. A wide variety of demographics engage with the lifeline across the Finger Lakes region.
“We are a confidential hotline,” says Deb Turner, director of crisis and referral services for Goodwill of the Finger Lakes. “Anyone who calls in only discloses information they are comfortable sharing. That information is secure.”
Geolocation has been adopted by 211 to improve coverage for callers not native to the area. Calls are now routed through cell towers to ensure that individuals can be connected with local resources in moments of need as efficiently as possible, instead of by area code.
In 2000, the Federal Communications Commission designated 211 as a local 24-hour support and referral hotline for community members in need. In the Finger Lakes region, Goodwill operates this service in collaboration with Vibrant Emotional Health, the administrators of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration-funded suicide and mental health 988 crisis lifeline.
The combined 211 and 988 teams—totaling 80 Goodwill of the Finger Lakes staffers—serve nine counties: Monroe, Wayne, Seneca, Ontario, Livingston, Cayuga, Schuyler, Steuben, and Yates. All respond to 211 engagements. Turner hopes that the team will expand to include 100 employees by the end of the year. An employee at Goodwill of the Finger Lakes since 2012, Turner took calls and answered chats and texts as a crisis counselor. Before COVID struck, that team had 30 employees.
The focus of 211 counselors is to connect callers with the service that will best serve their needs at that moment. Common issues include hunger, housing, transportation, health care, legal services and utility assistance.
Additionally, support often includes collaboration with 988, the suicide and crisis line. Regardless of which number is contacted first, teams are trained to work with each other depending on the circumstances of each individual caller.
Counselors are trained to diffuse situations, using frontline responders and clinical teams to de-escalate situations and support the caller’s needs. The goal is to not require police involvement.
“The community knows this is a resource,” Turner says
Ninety cents of every dollar given to Goodwill are invested into community resources and services such as 211/LIFE LINE and 988, officials say.
Counselors are trained for three to four weeks in a classroom setting where they learn various strategies to support individuals in crisis. These strategies include asking open-ended questions to gauge safety levels and continue the conversation, asking demographic questions to acquire a better understanding of the challenges, and building trust by establishing rapport and maintaining a supportive tone.
Geolocation has begun to play a key role in providing care. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Student Lifeline Act, signed on Sept. 9, now mandates that colleges across New York include information about 988 on ID cards, ensuring that students are aware of available resources. For colleges that do not use ID cards, information about 988 is required to be accessible to all active students.
State Sen. Samra Brouk and Assemblywoman Sarah Clark are working with Hochul to maintain the funding granted to 988 and 211 administrations.
A significant portion of the SAMHSA’s $8.1 billion budget has been directed toward increasing awareness of the 988 lifeline. Since 988’s launch in July 2022, counselors have answered more than 10 million calls, texts, and chats from people looking for help with suicidal thoughts and mental health and substance use-related crises, the agency reports.
Closer to home, a March report from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that the mental health needs of New Yorkers have greatly increased, with 21.1 percent of adults struggling with mental illness and 5.1 percent with a severe mental illness in 2021-2022. (The report used federal data.)
“Increased mental health services are urgently needed to meet the rising demand for care,” DiNapoli said at the time. “With the COVID pandemic behind us, New York must redouble its efforts to restore inpatient psychiatric bed capacity and preserve and expand telehealth services.”
Ethan Kryger is a former Rochester Beacon intern and a student at Nazareth University.
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