The Boar interviews Warwick Nightline

The Boar sat down with a member of the University of Warwick’s Nightline to ask them about their student-run support and listening service.

Situated on campus, Nightline is open from 9pm to 9am every night of term. The service takes calls, drop-ins, instant messages and is there to “listen to the students of Warwick…whether it’s a big problem, a small problem”, or “just whatever is going on”.

We were informed that volunteers this year have been trained not to advise callers. What is your policy on giving advice?

That actually isn’t a new policy –  it’s something we have tried to stick to throughout our time as a listening service.

All of our volunteers undergo a training weekend but none of us are trained in counselling or in giving advice. We maintain the perspective that all we know is what the caller chooses to tell us, we don’t know the ins and outs of it so are not in a position to give advice.

We can signpost callers to services that can give advice, or if we think a specific service can help them we can give them specific contact details, but we aren’t a counselling service in that sense so we aren’t going to say, we aren’t going to say how you should deal with a certain situation. At the end of the day we are only students.

Our service is here to listen and to make people feel like they’re not alone.

Do volunteers get trained by mental health professionals?

Our training is given to our current recruits by previous volunteers over a weekend. However, that training is provided to us by the Nightline Association who are trained mental health professionals.

We also have ongoing training sessions for our volunteers throughout their time as Nightliners. We can have various different people come in from different organisations to give talks, like the Samaritans or Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre (CRASAC). We have lots of different external speakers come in and speak to our volunteers.

Is there a pattern of when in the night you get the most calls?

I remember when I first joined, expecting that there would be some sort of pattern. But actually I would say that there isn’t. It can be really varied.

There isn’t even really a night of the week that’s busier than others. I’d say we probably hand out the most condoms on Wednesday but other than that, there isn’t really a pattern to it. We get calls all through the night.

We’re always available so we would never want people to think that calling at four or five in the morning is a difficult time. Any time is okay.

Do you get the same number of calls annually, or is it busier maybe around exams?

It can be a bit busier around the stressful times such as January and Term 3 exams, but we do have people call us all year round. University can be a difficult experience all year round.

Do people sometimes call you for advice on sexual health, or is there a stigma around that?

Nightline can be an attractive service to use because of the anonymity aspect. We do sometimes get calls relating to sexual health. Whether its talking about feelings, in which case we sit and listen, or whether its asking for advice, in which case we have lots of different services in which we signpost to.

Unfortunately, there is still a bit of a stigma around it and people can struggle to talk about it, which is why it’s good to have a listening ear.

As you mentioned, you’re a confidential service. But if someone rang in and you thought they were potentially going to harm themselves or someone else, what happens next?

We have quite a complicated policy relating to that, but for the most part we will only intervene if it’s directly requested by a caller. We are predominantly here to listen and to be there for people.

We can offer to help but usually we would only act on a caller’s information if they would ask us to.

Besides calls about mental health, what types of calls do you usually get?

We get calls about anything and everything really. Family issues, friend issues, although mental health is the most common one. It can even be “I’m locked out of my room who do I call?” Sometimes people really do just call for a chat.

We have calls where people are walking home from a night out and they’re on their own so they just wanted to have someone on the end of the phone.

Do you have a memorable call from your time working at Nightline?

I feel like every shift I’ve had has been memorable in some way. I just absolutely love what I do, all of us do. We really, really enjoy it. It’s a really rewarding experience. It can be tiring but every time I leave a shift, I leave feeling like I’ve helped someone.

As a volunteer, are your shifts 9pm til 9am?

Yeah, so we actually don’t sleep the entire night, so people tend to fit their time around that, taking naps the day before and the day after.

I remember when I first joined it seemed impossible! I love my sleep and I love my bed but the time passes really quickly. Everybody in the organisation is so lovely. We sit up chatting, we play games in between calls, we watch films, we make cups of teas and coffee and the time actually really does go quickly.

You get very close to people on shift as well because when you’re sat talking to them for 12 hours you get to know them well.

It’s also important to note that we only have a commitment to four shifts per term, and our commitment isn’t really hard and fast. So like if people join us and say to us, “we really want to join but we are worried about the sleep aspect of it” – particularly people who have really demanding degrees, other jobs or societies they are involved with – we are very flexible about that.

You can be as involved as you want to. We have some people who do a shift a week and some people who do a couple of shifts per term.

How do you assess the effectiveness of a call?

It’s hard to assess the effectiveness because we don’t really tend to get much feedback from callers.

There is a feedback form on our website. The Students’ Union (SU) does run surveys every so often, asking if any people have used the service and what they think of it. In terms of how effective a call is, one of the things that’s important to note is that we are not a helpline in the sense that we give advice, so sometimes we will end a call and you might not have necessarily helped or you might not have changed the situation. We are not intervening; we are just listening.

We try to do whatever we can to make the person on the phone feel listened to but it’s difficult to know how much you’ve helped.

When is the next annual Nightline conference and what was pointed out in particular at the last one?

The annual nightline conference is usually in the spring term. The Association gets as many of the Nightline coordinators together.

It’s really, really interesting. You get the opportunity to speak to all the different Nightlines. While we have the Association, we’re left to do a lot of what we want to do – the Nightlines are linked but we are independent – it’s interesting to hear from other Nightlines how they do things, how they run, how they sort out their rotas.

We also get guidance on writing policies and things as it’s really important to have safe-guarding policies, particularly for the welfare of our volunteers.

Is there a difference between the different Nightlines across the country in terms of what they provide?

No, we are all listening services. In terms of principle, every Nightline is non-judgemental and every service is non-advisory.

Is there anything in particular you want to stress to students who are unsure about calling in?

I think just stressing that it’s totally okay to speak to us, whenever, about anything. People are worried about waking us up because they think that we are sleeping but we’re not, or they worry about bothering us.

We all love what we do and want to make people feel like they are not alone, make them feel listened to, and just making sure nobody ever feels afraid to contact us. We are there for them, we are not linked to the University. Whatever you say in your call will stay between the caller and volunteer.

From a perspective of joining Nightline, reminding people that it’s actually like another society. We all get along really well, we spend a lot of time together. It’s just a really nice community to be a part of.

Your stand at your Societies’ Fair is not manned by anyone. Is this effective in terms of getting people to sign up to be Nightliners?

It has been quite effective, we do get sign ups definitely from society fairs, in the past we have been able to have ex-volunteers on the stand which has been really good. People like to ask questions and put a face to a society.

We take our anonymity very seriously as it’s very important to the welfare of our volunteers. That’s why the stand is empty.

I do think it can be effective in part, because in a society fair there is so much going on and so to see that stand that’s empty, it can draw people’s attention to it even more.

Is it difficult not telling anyone you know that you’re a Nightliner?

It can be difficult, definitely – disappearing for a whole night is no easy feat.

I would say most of our volunteers have told a couple of close friends, we take our anonymity very seriously but it’s important people know where you are in case anything happens.

Close friends of volunteers do tend to know what they do even if they don’t know the ins-and-outs of it.

For more information on Nightline and their services, you can visit https://warwick.nightline.ac.uk/.