HOW ARE YOU DOING?

With generous funding from Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, THA is pleased to announce that we are in the process of developing a year-long research project to ascertain a complete picture of service provision by phone across Northern Ireland.  The project will have three stages:

· A helpline benchmarking report

· Asking helpline callers their opinion

· The development of guidelines for commissioners and funders of helpline services

The overall project will allow helplines to work together to gain valuable information about how services are delivered.  The outcomes will tell us what works and what doesn't, produce definitions that we all can work to, discover how valuable callers find telephone services, and ultimately prove to funders the quality work maintained and developed by helpline services.

On 7 July 2004 over 25 organisations attended an information session introducing a research project. Over the next year THA will be contacting helplines and users of helplines to profile and benchmark services in Northern Ireland and produce guidelines for the department, commissioners and funders of helpline services in the future.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Already over 40 organisations have expressed an interest in being involved.  We are asking all health related organisations that either have a helpline or take calls from the public as part of campaigns or their ongoing work to complete a benchmarking and profiling questionnaire.  We are also looking at ways of contacting users of helplines for their opinions.  A small steering group supports the work.

We are sending out questionnaires in August 2004.  If your helpline operates in the fields of Health and Social Services, and you are based in Northern Ireland, please download your copy of the questionnaire, instructions and introductory letter below.

HAVE YOU EVER CARRIED OUT RESEARCH INTO THE NEEDS OF YOUR CALLERS? 

We would like to carry out a literature review of any caller analysis carried out in Northern Ireland. Please send copies of reports to Graeme Caul in the Belfast office.  We hope soon to launch a web-based questionnaire for callers to complete on their thoughts of helplines.  Please watch this space for more information.

If you have any questions or want to find out more, please call Graeme Caul on 028 9035 7852 or email mailto:graeme.caul@helplines.org.uk 

Download here:

Introductory letter (PDF)

Full questionnaire (Word)

Instructions (PDF)

Please contact the office for more information on 0845 120 3767 (local rate) or by email at info@helplines.org.uk