How do you start a crisis intervention center?

How do you start a crisis intervention center?

• The region in which I live in does not have a crisis intervention center and one is desperately needed. How do you start a Crisis Center (Prevention & Intervention)? The Crisis Center should have a Hot-line for child abuse victims, domestic violence victims, rape victims, suicidal callers, etc. How do you start one in a region or go about starting one? Please help!

• Answer:

  If you are thinking primarily of telephone help it might be easier to contact an existing national organization and getting some of their publicity material and make a huge effort to distribute it in your area. If you are wanting to set up a physical centre, you need people with organizational experience, funding and committed people (whether paid or voluntary) to run the service, again it might be worth to contact an existing organization and talk to someone about expanding to your region, this would save you a lot of hassle in terms of legal and organizational considerations, get evidence to support the need for the centre, you'll need this anyway if you are going to set up independently, medical and crime statistics should provide an idea of the need, do a really thorough search as there may be some self help or small existing organizations that are in real need of people to help publicize and who you could learn from. Hope this might help and very good luck.