Crisis Center of Johnson County expanding staff, services to provide additional suicide prevention access

The Crisis Center of Johnson County has become the first center in Iowa to become a core provider with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in an effort to increase service availability to their clients.

On Thursday, the Crisis Center of Johnson County entered into an agreement with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to increase their service availability from 40 hours on weekdays to 100 hours a week.

The increased hours will add more local availability to the national program's 24-hour service.

'The great thing is anytime day or night people can log on and talk with someone,' said Rachel Beach, the center's crisis chat program coordinator. 'For us it's obviously a very significantly expansion of when we're providing services.'

The agreement makes the Johnson County center the national lifeline's first core provider in Iowa and eighth in the country.

Per the agreement, the center will receive $122,500 over two years, much of which will be used to hire three new employees to staff the increased overnight hours.

Center staff will be answering calls and chats from the normal 2-10 p.m. time on weekdays with new availability seven days a week from 1:00-9:30 a.m.

In exchange for the supplemental funding, the center will be required to serve four clients per hour of operation through the online chat or phone service — that translates into 12,376 contacts per year.

Last year Crisis Center staff and volunteers took more than 2,600 crisis chat contacts.

Beach said staff and volunteers are confident in their ability to handle the increased call/chat volume.

The main goal, she said, is providing more availability to clients, who use the chat service for a variety of issues including suicidal thoughts, depression, and anxiety.

'There's never a lack of chats,' she said. 'This will allow us to spread out that demand a little bit and that was hopefully we can reach more people.'

While the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline began in 2012, Johnson County's service has been around since 2011 and the center has been offering crisis intervention support since the organization was founded in 1970.

'We've been really involved with them as they developed their program and we were well poised to take on this new role because we do have the experience and infrastructure,' Beach said.