The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Access Improvement Project supports the expansion of 988 Lifeline services for anyone in the U.S. who is experiencing a mental health or suicide crisis or their loved ones. Namely, this project will enhance the infrastructure for 988 operations and workforce management to meet increased service demands and expand language and access options; strengthen technical assistance, communication, and engagement with network centers to improve network performance; and expand support for populations at high risk of suicide. Through this project, 988 lifeline has the potential to reach over 7.5 million users in the coming year. This will be achieved by: 1. Improving operational efficiency and performance through the development of enhanced operational reporting, workforce management tools, enhanced network health monitoring, and alerting, the creation of a central management system, external partner dashboards, a public website to provide transparency into network health and performance, communications and media dashboards, secure tools to facilitate quality assurance activities, a system for managing information requests and a system for better managing the sub awardees that will support the expansion of services. For Spanish language services voice, chat and text will be expanded by contracting with additional crisis centers with Spanish-speaking counselors, investing the in the translation of training materials, resources, and public communications, and expanding our use of translation services access in network communications. We will build services for the deaf and hard of hearing by investing in Video Phone access and expanding contracts with centers working with deaf and hard of hearing communities. 2. Increasing communication with all centers, providing additional engagement and targeted technical assistance to low-performing centers and states, and providing additional technical support to better coordinate communications, meetings, and other activities. Enhancements to network infrastructure will further support this aim by providing more visibility into performance gaps, more timely notification of concerns, and new workforce management tools to better support performance improvement. 3. Expanding connection options to populations at high risk of suicide including LBGTQIA, American Indian and Alaskan Native, rural individuals, individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders, Black and African American youth, and older men, by engaging community experts, developing network training, and contracting with centers that specialize in providing services to these populations. We will engage in evaluation efforts to better understand preferred methods of contact for each of these populations and identify additional populations who may be at increased risk.
