Social Impact Project for Build a Searchable Repeat Caller Database for a Crisis Help Line

How This Works

As part of the TRANSFORM Support Hub, you will learn how to advance your career while getting hands on experience on projects like this one.

Project Description and Impact

Crisis Connections runs a number of different crisis help lines for individuals in Seattle, King County, and Washington State. While our services are meant to be a one time touch point for individuals in crisis, we have a number of repeat callers who call multiple times a day or week.

Currently, any information that we have to help repeat callers is stored in Excel spreadsheets or 3x5 index cards. The information is not easily searchable, unprotected, and is not easily synced across teams and programs (211 uses a different system for repeat callers than 988, for example, but a caller might call 211 on Tuesday and 988 on Thursday).

Our hope is to create a single secure online database that can be accessed by clinical staff, call screeners, and volunteers to provide better care with greater efficiency. Ideally this database would be accessible across our agency, with Crisis Connections staff being able to update the database's information in near real time as they work with callers.

Completing this project will have a positive effect on the quality and quantity of care Crisis Connections is able to provide to our community, the experience our staff and volunteers have, and the organizational efficiency with which we operate.

Learning Opportunity

Our hope is that this project represents an opportunity for an experteer to leave a lasting positive impact on social services in our community while learning about the operational challenges that face nonprofits.