How it Works

2. What do crisis care volunteers actually do?

Just as the paramedic's role is distinct from nurses' and doctors' roles, the crisis care volunteer's role is quite distinct from those of clinical counselors and clergy. As volunteers who receive extensive on-going training in crisis care, they are typically only involved with survivors in the first hours immediately following an incident. Once on scene, volunteers help to:

• calm survivors and serve as liaison with officers,
• provide a compassionate presence to help survivors express their anguish,
• help convene their family, friends and clergy,
• help them understand what is happening and what to expect,
• teach them how to care for themselves and one another in the days and weeks to come,
• refer them to agencies that provide long-term support, and
• provide other practical assistance as appropriate.

4. How much good can volunteers actually do in just a few hours on scene?

When tragedy strikes, many survivors face a critical moment in their lives, in which the vicarious circumstances of their experience can profoundly intensify the trauma of the tragedy itself. Effective on-scene compassion, support, and referral helps "contain" the trauma. This in turn helps survivors begin down the path to rebuilding healthy, fulfilling, productive lives, rather than a path to depression, stress disorders, substance abuse, school failure, job loss, family breakup, and other problems. Well-established crisis care programs regularly receive letters from survivors months after an incident expressing how positively the volunteers impacted them.

6. Who else might be doing this in my community?

Many communities around the U.S. have programs ancillary to community crisis care, such as programs that provide financial support to crime or fire victims, or that provide personal support days or weeks after a trauma, or only after major disasters. However, in most communities, particularly east of the Rockies, no organization provides immediate on-scene personal support to survivors of the majority of daily tragedies like suicides, accidents, and unexpected natural deaths like SIDS.

8. How many volunteers does a crisis care program need?

Crisis care programs must be prepared to immediately send volunteers to any location in its service area around the clock, 365 days a year. Thus, crisis care programs in major cities typically have at least 60 to 80 to over 100 active volunteers on their rosters, depending on the size of the city.

10. Are volunteers mental health counselors?

The immediate scene of a tragedy is usually not the time for clinical intervention, and the services provided by crisis care volunteers are practical rather than clinical. Thus, crisis care volunteers come from all walks of life. In fact, mental health professionals can sometimes even have more difficulty "taking off their clinical hat" to become crisis care volunteers.

12. How do programs screen and train their volunteers?

Crisis care programs typically require volunteer applicants to complete an extensive application, provide references, and undergo a thorough background check by law enforcement. Successful volunteer applicants typically receive at least 40-80 hours of classroom training. Trainees then accompany seasoned responders on live calls in the field. In most programs, trainees pass out of probation once they accumulate sufficient hours in the field, have been exposed to a variety of different types of calls, and obtained consistently favorable reviews from the seasoned responders that they accompany.

14. What's the typical annual budget for a community crisis care program?

Because crisis care programs operate almost exclusively through volunteers, administered by one or two paid staff, their annual budgets are generally under $200,000.

16. How many crisis care programs are there?

U.S. Crisis Care has never formally surveyed how many crisis care programs exist in the U.S. We are aware of about 25-30 programs, primarily in major metro areas in the western U.S.