Introduction Social Work and related professions have the potential to experience rapid change and growth in the future as technology advances and the population changes. This is especially true with artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence (AI) describes a range of technologies that allow machines or computers to make decisions that are normally made by human beings….
Tag: technology
Providing Emotional Support Over Text and Chat
Introduction to Text and Chat With text and chat services increasingly moving online, emotional support work – the core element of the work of crisis lines is needing to be adapted to work in new formats that require a change in your perspective and technique. On the telephone, there are a number of ways of…
Beginnings of an Online Crisis Chat Service
On June 29th, the Distress Centres of Dufferin/Wellington, Durham, Peel and Toronto joined together to launch an online crisis chat service. Texting through an unadvertised shortcode based on a service in the US or visiting our website provides access to a trained volunteer responder between 2pm and 2am. After running the service for a few…
Review of Suicide Risk Assessment Applications
A short post today; while considering embarking on a side project to develop an iOS or Android application it occurred to me that suicide prevention and crisis intervention are areas where mobile applications could certainly come in handy (as well as case management.) I downloaded an Android emulator and several free apps to prevent suicide:…
Developing a Risk Management Program for Your Helpline
Importance of Helpline Risk Management Risk management is the process of assessing and taking steps to mitigate areas where things that might go wrong in your organization. While we all hope that nothing would ever go wrong, it’s important that we are not caught blindsided. Some of these issues are within our control (e.g. helpline…