Highland charity number change to help those in need
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Inverness charity Mikeysline has defended a controversial change of phone number which it said was introduced to safeguard its future.
A spokeswoman for the suicide prevention group said the new number will expand the service to make it easier for those in need to use.
Mikeysline changed its phone number to 07786 20 77 55 to offer more services and to allow volunteers to remotely access calls and messages.
The charity was set up by family and friends in memory of Michael ‘Mikey’ Williamson and Martin Shaw, who were both 23 and living in Inverness. The men took their own lives within days of each other in October 2015.
In a statement, Emily Stokes, Mikeysline service manager, said: “Mikeysline has had a significant impact in Highland over these past five years, reaching and supporting people when they are at their most vulnerable and at risk.
“However, while phone lines can be transferred and diverted, this is not the case for this text line number and it was, therefore, linked to one handset, which was passed between volunteers and staff daily to ensure cover.
“Whilst this worked well in the early days and was essential when Mikeysline was first established with no funding, it is something that the board had been reviewing for some time to ensure the service could be strengthened and safeguarded for the future.”
She explained that in March, as the pandemic situation was emerging, one handset being passed between volunteers was no longer possible, and a number of phones with a new number were brought into use.
Ms Stokes continued: “Anyone contacting the original number was provided with the new temporary number.
“This was all successfully in place prior to the lockdown and Mikeysline went on to support three times as many contacts in that period.”
Ms Stokes said: “During the lockdown, we carefully reviewed how this temporary service worked, the benefits of it and where we felt further improvements could be made for the future. We also monitored carefully the fact that people attempted to contact us in other ways than via SMS text.
“We were also acutely aware that SMS texts do not always send or receive in real time and we wanted to provide options that would ensure there were no delays in responses from us.
“As a result, rather than simply replace the text line service with an advanced version of an SMS response service, we looked at options to expand the text-based options for people to contact us and a system that would operate in real time.
“We researched different options and have been working with a company over the last few months to put our new system in place.
“Given the impact of the lockdown, the ongoing concerns and restrictions due to Covid-19 and the widely known impact that this has had on the nation’s mental health, we were keen to ensure we could provide a more accessible and enhanced service as soon as we could and planned to launch it the moment it was ready.
“We launched our new service on Wednesday September 30, simply because it was the first day it was ready to go live.
She admitted that there had been some negative reactions to the number change but defended the move, saying: “Issues were raised about it being a memorable number. In the days of mobile phones and smart phones, most people do not memorise numbers, they tend to add them to their contacts and update them as required. We will, however, be monitoring the old phone number until we are sure that the new number has been adopted by everyone.
“We appreciate that some of the concerns also come from people feeling that something may be lost with the change of the number, given how Mikeysline came about. However, Mikeysline continues to grow from strength to strength and changing the number as part of an enhanced support service, will certainly not take anything away, only add to all that has gone before and all the options we can provide in the future.”
