About our telephone counsellors and supervisors

Our telephone counsellors are highly skilled men who are committed to making the world a safer place for everyone. They volunteer their time and are supervised by highly experienced counselling professionals who have specialist expertise in male family violence prevention.

In general, callers will speak with only one telephone counsellor in the course of the call. The exception to this is if a telephone counsellor believes that the caller or someone else is in immediate danger — in these circumstances he might ask the caller's permission for his supervisor to join in the discussion.

Our community development approach

We operate on a community development model. All of our telephone counselling is undertaken by specially trained volunteers drawn from the community. This means that the Men's Referral Service has extended opportunities to men outside the counselling profession to acquire and enhance counselling skills and become involved in activities to prevent male family violence. We believe this community development approach is a strength of our service.

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Training for telephone counsellors

Telephone counsellors undergo extensive training provided by Swinburne University of Technology. They must demonstrate their competence in a range of different skills before they commence work on the phones and are assessed further during their work on the phones.

Volunteers receive a Graduate Certificate (Social Science — Male Family Violence Telephone Counselling) when they have demonstrated that they meet all the competencies and have achieved 69 hours of telephone counselling work (23 shifts of three hours each).

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Supervision of telephone counsellors

Telephone counsellors check in with their supervisor before commencing a shift and are able to bring their supervisor in to any call if necessary.

After each shift, telephone counsellors debrief their calls with their supervisor, for quality assurance purposes but also to manage the effects of calls on their own emotional wellbeing.

Telephone counsellors must participate in regular group supervision and professional development activities, in which we explore themes and issues that arise in the course of male family violence prevention work. They also have on-site supervision on a periodical basis.

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Male telephone counsellors

We have chosen to only have male telephone counsellors because:

  • this avoids a gender based division between male callers and telephone counsellors. This can be helpful when, for example, the telephone counsellor engages a male caller around his understanding of violence. In these situations, the caller is unable to say things like 'You would say that, you're a woman'. 
  • women already carry the lion's share of volunteering in the community and in family violence prevention, and arguably it's not their responsibility to take on more
  • male callers might be less likely to abuse male telephone counsellors (this is an occupational health and safety issue).

Some people might feel that the Men's Referral Service's all male' space is also positive because it increases gender-based personal development opportunities for male volunteers. We view this idea as potentially dangerous, because it reinforces the idea that it is acceptable for men to speak differently about their feelings and behaviour when they are not in the presence of women. the Men's Referral Service exists in part to encourage and support men to talk openly with women about their feelings. We 'walk the talk' in this regard by promoting accountability to women in all aspects of our work — anything one of our telephone counsellors says should be able to be said in front of a woman.

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Supervisors

Men's Referral Service supervisors are highly qualified and experienced male family violence prevention professionals. They generally have either psychology or social work backgrounds, and many are facilitators of men's behaviour change programs. We are fortunate to have some of the most experienced and highly respected practitioners in the field as supervisors.

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