Life-Line fears staff cuts in face of funds shortfall

Press, 7 October 1988, Page 5

Life-Line fears staff cuts in face of funds shortfall

Life-Line’s Christchurch counselling services might suffer from increasing funding problems, said the voluntary organisation’s director, Mr Allan Bloore, yesterday. The telephone and personal counselling service was in no immediate danger of disappearing, but it would have to find another $12,000 or $13,000 next year or it would have to reduce the number of its paid trained staff from four, said Mr Bloore.

That would affect the training of the 74 telephone volunteers and, ul-

timately, the quality of client service, he said. Counsellors increasingly needed a lot of expertise and training to be effective in helping many of Life-Line’s clients who often had complex, longterm problems, said Mr Bloore. About 10 per cent of those counselled were contemplating suicide, which meant counsellors had a “huge load to bear” if they felt they were the only ones “standing between that person and death.”

The Christchurch Methodist Mission, which

acts as an umbrella for the service and traditionally picked up the shortfall in donations and grants, had set an upper limit this year. That meant Life-Line would have to find the extra money to cover the costs of keeping a half-time paid staff member.

The demand for LifeLine’s services, both telephone and personal counselling, was increasing. Last year about 8500 people had telephoned the service for help, and up to 1200 had made appointments to see staff for

“face to face” counselling. Most of the callers were concerned about relationship problems between men and women and parents and children. Increased redundancies in Christchurch in the last year were also reflected in the growing number of calls from people concerned about getting or losing jobs. Life-Line would try to raise more money next year during its twentyfifth anniversary celebrations, as well as applying for community grants, Mr Bloore said.