Copper Shores Crisis Line to be replaced with sexual assault hotline
HANCOCK, Mich. (WJMN) – The crisis line offered by Copper Shores Community Health Foundation will be discontinued starting on June 1st.
As the number of crisis hotlines nationwide have increased, the amount of callers to the Copper Shores hotline has decreased.
“So we have noticed a steady decrease in calls coming into our general crisis line since about 2015, 2016,” said Krissy Martens, the Program Director of Education and Outreach for Copper Shores Community Health Foundation. “That did coincide with some things that were going on nationally with the opening of other issue specific crisis lines and also texting lines that were available to people that didn’t exist before. And so in about 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic started, we noticed a sharp, sharp decline in calls coming into our crisis line. We’ve never really rebounded since that time. And so we’ve been thinking, you know, for about four years about this now, and the call volume just didn’t make sense for us to keep this operational any longer. So that’s how the decision came about to close the crisis line.”
Although the crisis hotline will be discontinued, a new hotline is starting this spring.
Copper Shores Community Health Foundation is launching the Copper Shores Sexual Assault Hotline. This hotline will be available to residents of Keweenaw, Houghton, Baraga, and Ontonagon counties.
“So the reason we’re keeping the number available for victims and survivors of sexual assault is because that is tied to grant funding that we get,” said Martens. “So we were contractually obligated to keep something available 24 hours, seven days a week. There aren’t enough calls for that coming in to also save the crisis line. So what we’re doing is we’re going to have a new number here at Copper Shores for that. The state coalition had launched an issue specific crisis line for victims and survivors of sexual assault in around 2019 or 2020, they were launching that. And so it just made sense since they used the same funders that we used to have them answer that line.”
Residents of the counties where the hotline is available will be able to call, text, or live chat with trained professionals who will provide confidential support, referrals for support, resources to help with healing, and much more.
Copper Shores Community Health Foundation will be releasing the new sexual assault hotline number within the next few weeks. To learn more about the new hotline, and to stay up to date on when they release the new number, you can find their Facebook page here, and their website here.
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