Our Phones Are Back Up!

Posted on March 15, 2021

Since March 2020 our volunteers and staff have been working remotely, running our HelpLine to provide support to 2SLGBTQ+ youth through chat and text only. This was a crisis response and we knew that we would need long-term solutions to meet the growing demand for our HelpLine, and to continue service delivery on phone, chat, and text.

Today we are excited to announce the re-launch of our phone lines! Our dedicated volunteers have completed a brand-new phone training to increase their skills and confidence, and they are ready to support youth across Ontario.

On March 15th, 2021, our phone lines have begun their soft-launch. We are still working to increase our phone capacity by training more volunteers to support phones. Given this, our phone lines will have reduced hours each night. Our new hours will be:

• Phones: Sun-Fri from 6 pm – 9 pm E.S.T.
• Chat/text: Sun-Fri from 4 pm -9:30 pm E.S.T.

If you are looking for support via phone, please give us a call during our hours at 1-800-268-9688.

You can also always reach us by text at 647-694-4275, or by chat on our website: https://www.youthline.ca/

About our New Phone Lines:

We are very excited to be able to offer our phone service again this Spring! Our phone lines are hosted on a brand-new VoIP service. Just like our chat & text service, our phone lines are completely anonymous. Our new phone system blocks our access to your phone numbers and does not store your location or number in our records. We only know what you tell us!

It’s possible you may experience some delays when giving us a call, or technical issues as we get comfortable on our new system. With a smaller team of volunteers right now, you may experience some delays in reaching someone. We are hoping to further increase our capacity and be back to full hours in the near future. You are always welcome to continue reaching out through chat/text and even email (askus@youthline.ca)!

For more details about the steps we took to re-launch our phone lines this past year, check out our Phone Implementation Plan.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Minna Frederick, Peer Support Manager, at MinnaF@youthline.ca.