Calling on the lifeline

When is a phone not a phone? When it’s a mobile support centre.

A new generation of ‘mobile natives’ – teenagers who have never known a world without mobile phones – is tapping into the technology for its vital needs.

Providing health advice and crisis support is high on the list for The Vodafone UK Foundation, which is teaming up with partner charities to make contact with hard-to-reach groups such as the young, the deprived and the homeless. Research by Shelter shows that the last thing a young homeless person would give up is their mobile phone – because if they don’t have a fixed address or access to a landline, it is their permanent point of contact with the world.

With that in mind the Foundation is working with YouthNet to repurpose its TheSite.org web content to be accessible by mobile phones, and is aiming to target 20,000 young people in next 12 months. They’ve already converted their ‘local advice finder’, where young people key in their postcode to get contact details of support organisations in the area, which can help on anything from abuse, bereavement and domestic violence, to drugs and alcohol advice, and sexual health. The postcode data showed that people who accessed information via mobile internet (Wap) rather than fixed-line internet access, were more likely to be from deprived areas.

Sarah Shillito, head of The Vodafone UK Foundation and Social Investment, says that mobile access means YouthNet is reaching new sections of society. As Claire Easterman of YouthNet explains, some might not be able to use the internet at home because it’s not personal enough. “If you take someone who is in a violent or abusive relationship, the only thing they have which provides them with personal access is a mobile.”

Others might be in crisis situations where they need help immediately: “The local advice finder comes in useful because you can call someone straight away – find a number and call it.” The next step for YouthNet, she says, is to find a way of using SMS (text messaging) as a means of accessing their support services.

That’s something that Samaritans has been piloting – first at music festivals, and then nationally. Analysis showed that more people confirmed they were feeling suicidal when they texted the charity, than when they called them; Samaritans suggests that young people are used to using texting as a way of having difficult conversations discreetly.

So far the charity has received around 270,000 texts from its 5,000 users, and is rolling the project out incrementally to cope with demand.

The phenomenon is taking off around the country, with local councils trying it too. As part of its Tackling Teenage Pregnancy strategy, Lincolnshire County Council set up a service allowing youngsters to uses SMS to ask for advice – and 1,000 teenagers used it in the first year.

Shillito believes that providing information by mobile to vulnerable members of society will increasingly become the obvious thing to do. “These people will grow old with mobiles,” she says. “Being able to access support using a favoured means of communication, which today’s older generation wouldn’t think to use, gives a feel of the future; beyond using the mobile as a phone.” – Chris Alden

20 March 2008

Chris Alden