Introduction

Co.R.A.L (Coordinamento Regionale Linee di Ascolto Telefonico) is the network of help lines of Lombardia region and started its activities in September 2000.

At that time the most urgent necessities were to study in depth the reality of the help lines and to put together the professionalism of voluntary service, of public service and of private social service.

The first aims of the association were:

•  to develop shared goals, methods, strategies for all its members
•  to expand the mutual knowledge on the help lines
•  to highlight common problems
•  to build a reliable network of help lines

Current members of Co.R.A.L. are help lines working in these fields:

•  specific diseases (diabetes, Alzheimer, Aids, Parkinson, etc.)
•  elderly persons
•  women
•  under age and young people
•  psychiatry and depression
•  alcoholism and other addictions
•  sexual orientation and gender identity
•  immigration
•  mobbing

Qualifications

Co.R.A.L. warrants the quality standards of its members through the request and verification of the following qualifications:

•  the help line must have at least two years of continuous activity 
•  the help line must have own premises or a dedicated area for the service for at least 6 hours per week
•  attest, during the year, the participation of some volunteers or of some public operators of the help line 
   to at least one training or refresher course organized by the association
•  write a yearly report on the activities of the help line

Activities of a help line

The help lines offer listening skills, information services or guidance to people who call these services. Additionally, help lines can ‘activate’ people making them transfer their requests to more specific and apt services in the territory. In this way it is possible to forestall and intervene precisely on different fields of discomforts.

Thanks to anonymity and to the immediacy of the telephone answer, the help lines often find emerging needs more quickly. Then, for the territorial public services they can become a precious resource to set up new interventions and act pre-emptively in several areas.

The help lines

•  offer an actual possibility of aid to people for whom the support of the formal and/or informal system cannot 
   be used or is not sufficient and also in very problematic fields
•  warrant discretion, immediate listening and answer to a problem and to the need of communication
•  give the possibility of talking of one’s own problem with a voice that does not force to go to a public health or 
   social welfare service or an association if the person is not ready.

Mission

In addition to all the above mentioned issues, Co.R.A.L.

•  offers services of information and contacts to promote interventions of prevention and cure
•  spreads the culture of phone help.
•  puts in mutual contact voluntary services, public bodies, training institutions and newspapers
•  gives information on policies and programs of national and international institutions with regard to help lines
•  undertakes studies, researches on help lines and organizes specific training courses

Training
Co.R.A.L. believes that only through proper and constant training it is possible for the operators to develop and utilize all their resources in the relationships that are developed during the phone conversation.
Therefore Co.R.A.L. has organized several training and refresher courses on different technical and psychological aspects of the help line service, so as to improve the quality of the listening skills, the capability of orienting to more specific services, the respect to the people who contact the service. Other courses analyzed how to set up and organize a help line, how to manage a group, how to communicate and make proper fund raising.