The Department of Veteran Affairs has opened a new call center in Atlanta to provide suicide prevention and crisis intervention services to more veterans in need of assistance.The veteran crisis line satellite office is meant to double VA’s capacity to assist veterans, service members and their family members worldwide as a part of the MyVA initiative, VA said Tuesday.
VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson said the department will provide “those who save lives every day at the crisis line the training, additional staff and modern call center technology they need to make the veterans crisis line a Gold Standard operation.â€
The center will connect veterans with suicide prevention coordinators and interface with the Veterans Health Administration‘s Suicide Prevention Program Office and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to provide critical services to veterans and service members.
The call center in Atlanta has 200 call center representatives and 25 social service assistants and support staff.
Crisis line counselors have responded to nearly 2.6 million calls, deployed emergency services more than 67,000 times, answered nearly 62,000 requests since the launch of text services and engaged nearly 314,000 veterans or concerned family members since the launch of VCL in 2007.
