By Randall S. Nicklaus
executive director, Telephone Counseling and Referral Service
The callers have ranged from scared six-year-olds at home alone to pregnant teenagers, suicidal parents, dying AIDS patients and their grieving partners.
For 25 years, volunteers have taken the calls and done what they could. Sometimes the children were reassured, the suicidal were pulled back to life and the grieving were comforted.
And sometimes the volunteers, instead of burning out on grief, fear and tragedy, have found a calling.
On the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Telephone Counseling and Referral Service (TCRS), volunteers, staff -- and a few of those they helped -- are preparing to celebrate the service's birthday and their own experience with it.
Many of the celebrators will be social-service professionals who started on the phones at TCRS.
"TCRS provided me with the best opportunity in obtaining and practicing interviewing and intervention skills out of all my education, bachelor's and master's degree," said Keith Ivy, a volunteer from 1976 to 1978 who is now director of the Employee Assistance Program at Tallahassee Memorial Regional Medical Center. "It provided a base on which to develop other skills." Ivy also has a private practice.
Paul Freeman, a former volunteer, trainer and clinical back-up person who now works in victim services at the Florida Attorney General's office, said he prefers to hire people with telephone counseling experience.
The service started in 1970 with an FSU grant for a 24-hour crisis hotline program. Graduate students in Dr. Patrick Cook's seminar in community psychology drafted a proposal for the Telephone Counseling Service, and it opened at the FSU Student Counseling Center in Bryan Hall.
The next year, the service expanded beyond the campus to the Tallahassee community, and eventually came to cover the entire Big Bend area. University courses in three departments provided credit to volunteers who completed the 80-100-hour hotline training program.
A series of grants enabled TCS to develop training for human-service workers in a variety of settings -- for nurses, emergency medical technicians, police and others.
"We would set up role plays with people on ledges or in domestic quarrels and teach the trainees how to intervene and de-escalate those in crisis," recalled Bill Steward, a staff member during the 1970s.
In 1976, TCS moved off campus, incorporated as a non-profit organization and added "referral" to its name, reflecting a broader purpose.
Since 1970, more than 620,000 callers have been served by TCRS and more than 2,000 volunteers have been trained as hotline counselors. Hundreds of suicides have been prevented. Specialized hotlines have been added -- for AIDS, children, teenagers, healthy babies and stressed-out parents.
TCRS will celebrate its anniversary with a party on Saturday, September 30, from 6 p.m. to midnight at the Bradfordville Hunt Club. Friends and alumni of TCRS are invited to share their stories at the celebration. Anyone interested in attending should call me, Randy Nicklaus, at 904-681-9131. Send stories you want to share to P.O. Box 20169, Tallahassee, Fla. 32316.