1 N. 1/2011 - 1 October 2011 EDITORIAL With this issue of IFOTES news we are happy to ac- tivate again a communication channel with mem- bers, volunteers and professionals of telephone emergency services for emotional support. It has always been a strong wish for everyone, from the President to the International Committee, to keep connections up to date with the “TES world” and share information and news to improve the service and the experience of being a TES volunteer, post director or trainer. Now thanks to the dedicated work of the IC member Annemarie Grether from Switzerland and the secretary Elena Misdariis from Italy we are able to offer this chance again. We will post news at least twice a year, with the latest in- formation on IFOTES activities and best experiences from members. Feel free to contribute with sugges- tions, requests and information. We look forward to receiving your feedback and inputs and hope you enjoy reading the IFOTES news! Diana Rucli, Director IC delegates 2010-2013 at their first meeting Hagen (Germany) November 2010 IFOTES-Training Transforming aggression into balanced emotions Training seminar for member Federations, Berlin, 17-19 June 2011 TES volunteers experience every day on the phone the need of managing their own emotions and get properly in contact with those of the callers, espe- cially in the case of aggressive communication and in calls that have a content related to violence. The main chance to improve quality of listening is taking care of the copying and emotional skills of lis- teners through a specially designed training. For this purpose a new training concept was developed by IFOTES to help volunteers dealing with emotions of aggression and violence, both of themselves and of the callers. This training approach was presented for the first time in the IFOTES congress in Vienna - July 2010, and is made available now to member Federations who are willing to use it in the on-going training of listeners. The innovative approach chosen is called Brief Stra- tegic Therapy and it origins from the Communica- tion theory of Gregory Bateson and the Pragmatic of Human Communication of Paul Watzlawick (Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto). This model has been developed by Paul Watzlawick and Giorgio Nardone into a modern approach which does not focus on “why” a problem exists, but on “how” it is structured and works to establish dysfunctional so- IFOTES NEWS This issue… Editorial IFOTES Training IFOTES Congress 2013 Prevention of suicide on tracks 116123 European Short Number European Short Number
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N. 1/2011 - 1 September 2011
N. 1/2011 - 1 October 2011
EDITORIAL With this issue of IFOTES news we are happy to ac-tivate again a communication channel with mem-bers, volunteers and professionals of telephone emergency services for emotional support. It has always been a strong wish for everyone, from the President to the International Committee, to keep connections up to date with the “TES world” and share information and news to improve the service and the experience of being a TES volunteer, post director or trainer. Now thanks to the dedicated work of the IC member Annemarie Grether from Switzerland and the secretary Elena Misdariis from Italy we are able to offer this chance again. We will post news at least twice a year, with the latest in-formation on IFOTES activities and best experiences from members. Feel free to contribute with sugges-tions, requests and information. We look forward to receiving your feedback and inputs and hope you enjoy reading the IFOTES news!
Diana Rucli, Director
IC delegates 2010-2013 at their first meeting Hagen (Germany) November 2010
IFOTES-Training
Transforming aggression into balanced emotions Training seminar for member Federations, Berlin, 17-19 June 2011 TES volunteers experience every day on the phone the need of managing their own emotions and get properly in contact with those of the callers, espe-cially in the case of aggressive communication and in calls that have a content related to violence. The main chance to improve quality of listening is taking care of the copying and emotional skills of lis-teners through a specially designed training. For this purpose a new training concept was developed by IFOTES to help volunteers dealing with emotions of aggression and violence, both of themselves and of the callers. This training approach was presented for the first time in the IFOTES congress in Vienna - July 2010, and is made available now to member Federations who are willing to use it in the on-going training of listeners. The innovative approach chosen is called Brief Stra-tegic Therapy and it origins from the Communica-tion theory of Gregory Bateson and the Pragmatic of Human Communication of Paul Watzlawick (Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto). This model has been developed by Paul Watzlawick and Giorgio Nardone into a modern approach which does not focus on “why” a problem exists, but on “how” it is structured and works to establish dysfunctional so-
IFOTES NEWS
This issue…
Editorial IFOTES Training IFOTES Congress 2013 Prevention of suicide on tracks 116123 European Short Number
European Short Number
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lutions. The objective is to help the person to change his/her “glasses” and transform dysfunc-tional solutions into functional and effective solu-tions. This approach can be effectively transferred in training, coaching and counseling of groups and organizations. The aim of the training is to provide the participants with the following knowledge and skills:
Improve knowledge about the different aspects of violence and the mechanisms that trigger it; develop the awareness on the ways in which the cycle of violence works and how to break it.
Help TES listeners to be aware of their violent (esp. aggressive) emotions and find new ways to change effectively their behaviours, particularly with callers, but also in their daily live.
Provide TES listeners with effective communica-tion tools which can support them in managing difficult phone calls with contents of violence.
Find creative and alternative ways of handling emotions of aggression and anger expressed by the callers.
IFOTES wishes that the training will be useful to member federations to increase listeners’ commu-nication skills and motivation to improve the ser-vice. The training could be developed thanks to the con-tribution of the Swiss Foundation Education4Peace.
IFOTES
The experience: participants IFOTES-Training launched: successful start in Berlin "Listening for Peace" the topic of the 18th IFOTES Congress 2010 in Vienna remains relevant in the TES context. On the phone we have to handle ver-bal violence by callers as well as talks about experi-enced conflicts and violence that can affect us. Sometimes callers get to our sore points: they make us angry or even aggressive. IFOTES president Stefan Schumacher and director Diana Rucli devel-oped a specific tool for violence prevention in tele-phone counselling, a training program to enable the volunteers to improve their capacity to face talks with aggressive contents or a tendency to vio-lence. On June 17-19th 2011 in Berlin took place the first training course of this type. It addressed TES-trainers from all over Europe. The training is composed of four modules. It analy-ses the basis of conflict, aggression and violence and gives space to our own experiences. The con-
versation technique is based on the Brief Strategic Therapy of the school of Arezzo and is specially drawn up for difficult talks. Role-playing illustrates how to lead the conversations, appreciating the caller and keeping contact to oneself at the same time. The goal is to master situations that make us feel uneasy, even cheated and let us sometimes doubt about the sense of our TES work specially in the case of sexually-motivated calls. "I feel taken seriously with my specific TES-trainer problems” was one of the comments. It was a pleasure to work in this large group. Within no time we reached a common understanding despite of our different national origins. Presentations and discussions were held in English. The problems in the case studies, for example from Slovenia or Nor-way, were immediately evident to everybody due to the common TES experience. Amazingly simple and strongly effective were the exercises given by Diana and Stefan to teach us how to listen for peace. In the end some confessed that that they had often a silent "Aha!" on their lips during the training. Our thoughts, feelings and interactions were stimulated. In the plenary sessions we had time enough to share impressions and observa-tions, questions and objections. Conversations were going on during the breaks . In our free time we enjoyed the city of Berlin or recovered in the hotel lobby with some refresh-ments. With the help of the training manual and materials we can now transfer the knowledge to our coun-tries and regions to the benefit of the volunteers and the quality of their work at the phone. A first interim report is scheduled in 2013 at the 19th IFOTES Congress in Gothenburg.
Bettina Irschl, Munich Michael Probst-Neumann, Bonn
17 trainers from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Slovenia and Sweden attended the training in Berlin.
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Prevention of suicide on tracks - Belgium campaign
The Belgian railway company SNCB and Infrabel, re-sponsible for the tracks and infrastructure ap-proached Tele-Onthaal (106) to start a common campaign to reduce suicidal accidents on the tracks. Tele-Onthaal invited Télé-Accueil (107) and Tele-fonhilfe (108) to join the project and they decided to develop a poster in the 3 Belgium languages. Saatchi & Saatchi a well- known international adver-tising agency realized the posters for free . The posters are now displayed in almost all train sta-tions in Belgium. Most of the costs were funded by SNCB/Infrabel.
European Short Number 116123
The European short number 116 123 has been cre-ated for international emotional support helplines. This number allocation follows a decision made by the European Commission to provide a ‘same num-ber - same service’ across all member states to ac-cess services of extreme social value. Given the so-cial importance of a number such as 116 123, the European Commission has stated that it should be free of charge for the caller. Nevertheless most IFOTES members do not get funds from the gov-ernments to run this service. IFOTES is applying initiatives to make EU aware and to find possible solutions. Country Assigned Actual use
Austria A – 20/06/2008 ORF – Österreichischer Rundfunk
(Austrian Red Cross)
operational
Belgium
Bulgaria
Czech Republic
Estonia
Finland A - 07/02/2008 Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
France
Germany Assigned on 06/08 2008 to Katholische Bundesarbeitsge-meinschaft für Ehe-, Familien- und Lebensberatung, Telefonseelsorge und Offene Tür e.V.
operational
Hungary May /2011 LESZ operational
Italy
Lithuania Assigned on 28/04/2009 to Lithuanian Association of Telephone Emergency Services
operational
Luxembourg
The Netherlands on 29/04/2008
to SOS Telefonische Hulpdiensten and Assigned on 29/05/2008 to Stichting Korrelatie
Norway
Poland Assigned on 30/03/2009 to Netia S.A. (in cooperation with Institute of Health’s Psychology – Instytut Psychologii Zdrowia)
operational
Portugal
Slovenia Assigned on 21/02/2008 to Zveza slov. Drustev svet za telef. Pomoc v stiski-STS
operational
Spain
Sweden Assigned on 24/01/2008 to Church of Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom Assigned on 16/12/2008 to the Samaritans
IFOTES congress – Gothenburg 10-14 July 2013, first steps
Gothenburg is the city of the next IFOTES congress in 2013. In April the international committee signed the letter of agreement between IFOTES and Tes in Sweden. A steering group composed of five mem-bers will handle the organisation and management of the congress, starting with the contract negotia-tions and the related commitments. Svenska Mäs-san, the location, is situated not far from the centre of the city and right next to the old and atmospheric Liseberg amusement park. There are super modern facilities, exhibition halls and conference venues in all sizes and for all needs. A scientific committee will work on the theme and give specific guidelines to the members concerning the speakers required and the process to select them. Work shops will be organised with a close re-lation to daily TES work. That will give an opportu-nity for our members to present and discuss their own work and a platform for knowledge exchange and enriching contacts between the participants from the federations. Gothenburg is Sweden’s second largest city situated on the west coast. The moderating influence of the gulf stream makes the climate mild despite of the high northern latitude. It is an important trading and university city. Many parks to enjoy in the late evening summer light and a rich cultural life make it a perfect place for our next congress.
The members of the Congress Steering Committee had the first meeting in Gothenburg last July 2011 .
Gothenburg – Sweden - IFOTES City Congress 2013
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