Short phone number long on service

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006 | 7:07 a.m.

The guy on the line said he was about to drive his car into a brick wall.

It was the last call for operator Jennifer Hudson in her sixth week on an 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. shift at Nevada's new 211 number, a one-stop hotline for information about health and social services. Although the caller sounded serious, Hudson was able to talk him down and get his story. He said he had been incorrectly diagnosed with a heart condition, and that after surgery, his health had declined.

"This ruined my life," he told Hudson.

Using one of the technological features built into the service, the unflappable Hudson was able to patch the caller through to another line, where a suicide counselor picked up the ball.

Not every call of the nearly 64,000 made to the 211 number since it was launched in March has been dialed from the edge of a crisis.

As a recent visit to the three-desks-in-an-office-built-for-one demonstrates, the almost nonstop rings to the hotline are for requests including where to get treatment for drug addiction and how to get broken plumbing repaired at a low cost.

A poem titled "Listen" hangs on the wall.

The three operators in the innovative, privately and publicly funded program do a lot of that - including, at times, to questions for which the service was not designed.

Giselle Sanchez, the Spanish-speaking operator of the three, recalled the time someone called asking for a list of all 4,800 services in the program's database.

Hudson fielded the "classic" call: "Can you tell me where Wells Fargo is?" There also have been calls asking where to get the best pizza and other offbeat requests for information not related to health or well-being. Those questions are either referred to 411 - which people don't like, because unlike 211, it costs money - or politely left unanswered.

But one thing's for sure, said Terrie Stanfill, executive director at HELP of Southern Nevada, the nonprofit agency that oversees the project: "We're overwhelmed."

When the Legislature approved funding for the program, Nevada became only the 17th state to have statewide coverage with the 211 service - meaning the book is still being written on how to run it.

The hotline is particularly suited for the Las Vegas Valley, Stanfill said, because of the constant arrival of newcomers, many of them clueless when it comes to getting help with basic needs.

So far, Nevada's 211 program is staffed by operators at HELP during the day, and by another crew in Reno from 4 p.m. to midnight, seven days a week. Because both teams have access to the same database, it doesn't matter where they're sitting, Stanfill said.

Although state, federal and private funding, including United Way, provided a total of $530,000 for the program, Stanfill noted that more than three times the expected number of calls have been logged. And that's without an ad campaign slated to kick off in December.

Apart from the fact that operators handle the calls themselves, the support services make the program more than simply a phone version of a Google search.

To keep the database as current, accurate and comprehensive as possible - a daunting challenge given that agencies close, funding gets pulled and requirements get rewritten - someone has to research the fluid world of public and private agencies offering counseling, low-cost health care, help with the rent and assistance with other needs.

That goal is achieved in part by having a volunteer call back 10 percent of all the people who have dialed the hotline to find out whether the referrals actually worked. The survey can help to weed out agencies to which people are sent only to get no help, Stanfill said.

Of the referrals logged so far, seven of the top 10 were to nonprofit agencies, with the Clark County Social Service, state welfare and Social Security agencies rounding out the list.

Many callers were seniors or disabled, or needed help with medical, rent, utility and housing costs.

Meanwhile, back at the hotline, the phone keeps ringing.

And the guy in his car?

"I wished I knew how it turned out," Hudson said. Privacy laws prohibit her from asking the crisis-line staff, however.

Still, if such a call comes through again, Stanfill said, the 211 operators will do all they can to calm the person down and get him some immediate help.

"They're not professional counselors," she said. "But they won't let go of that call."