In 2006 the National Council on Family Violence, which at the time oversaw the Texas Council on Family Violence and the National Domestic Violence Hotline, was asked to submit a grant application for an extension of our hotline services to teens and young adults and teens. The new service would be offered through a separate web-portal, feature a youth-accessible brand and offer services via the site in addition to traditional telephone lines. The grant was awarded in mid October with a specific launch date of the first week in February 2007. Initially, we identified Tocquigny Marketing in Austin as a contractor for development of logo and brand assets, as well as a website, while we approached the technical aspects of the services, including a of it’s kind web-based live chat. Almost immediately post-February-launch, we realized we needed a much more robust blog service for the site than had been initially developed, and a greatly expanded social media presence. These we facilitated in-house, building our own WordPress site, expanding our blog capabilities and ramping-up our content creation strategy. We also made the agencies first move into social media utilizing MySpace, Facebook, and later Twitter.
Over the next few years, as our outreach efforts expanded it became clear that while we were helping our target audience, our internal resources were insufficient to meet the large demands. Our Chat service was regularly overwhelmed by large traffic numbers, and our site was taken down by traffic spikes on a regular basis. In an effort to identify partners in the movement, in the fall of 2010 we entered into a formal partnership with Break the Cycle, a Los Angeles based organization who’s been in the Teen Dating Violence advocacy business for over 15 years. Through the efforts of the partnership’s increased resources we are focusing on relaunching a new website that encompasses both brands and offers what we hope will be the ultimate resource for teens and young adults. Additionally, my colleagues and i have led an initiative to pioneer chat services via SMS (text message) and efforts to provide service provision via social media, an effort we hope will lead to new venues of advocacy across diverse populations in the dating violence and social work fields.
My roles in this project have varied from leading the site design on both coding and concept on multiple occasions, to helping analyze IT needs for the initiative, helping to select new resources, and sitting at the negotiation tables during the partnership discussion with Break the Cycle. I strongly believe the Helpline represents the pinnacle of teen advocacy in the domestic field, and could not be prouder of the work out team has executed over the past four years, and could not be more proud of what we have accomplished.
Events and Milestones
loveisrespect, National Dating Abuse Helpline was launched in February 2007 with help from founding sponsor, Liz Clairborne Inc. It is a national 24-hour resource that can be accessed by phone or the internet, specifically designed for teens and young adults. The Helpline and loveisrespect.org offer real-time one-on-one support from trained Peer Advocates. Peer Advocates are trained to offer support, information and advocacy to those involved in dating abuse relationships as well as concerned parents, teachers, clergy, law enforcement, and service providers.
