The Orthodox community in Manchester is planning to open a new crisis, advice and intervention hotline, “in light of recent tragedies and due to desperate need from both parents and teenagers.”

The service, offered by the Gateway Action charity in Salford, will use trained volunteers to help callers on issues including suicide prevention, anxiety and depression, addiction and harassment.

The charity said that the hotline’s main purpose “is to ensure that no one should suffer or feel alone in our kehilla [community] and that [they should know] there are people that truly care about them.”

Yisroel Hassell, one of the leaders of the initiative, told the JC that the service had been set up in response to two teenage suicides which had taken place within the Manchester Orthodox community in the last seven months.

Most recently, in January, an Orthodox teenage pupil of the King Yavneh Girls School in Crumpsall, North Manchester, was found dead in an abandoned building in the city. Although a man was initially arrested on suspicion of murder, the Greater Manchester Police concluded that the death was not suspicious and described it as “an incredibly tragic set of circumstances”.

Mr Hassell said that the plan was to begin the service straight after Pesach, starting with “four two-hour slots each week”, two for men and two for women. He described how, when it came to sensitive issues within the frum community, “it will be easier for women to speak to women and men to speak to men”. Callers remain anonymous and call handlers will be known by their hotline names.

Twenty-five volunteers — “two thirds are women and one third are men, we’re slightly short of male volunteers” — have just completed their first training course, which was delivered by a clinical psychologist and professional crisis intervention therapist. The charity described the goal of the course as being “to empower the volunteers to be able to help victims and their families.”

However, Mr Hassell also made it clear that a guide was being prepared for hotline volunteers, so they would know exactly who to refer a case to in the event that a situation was too much for them to handle alone.

“We’re building up a proper list,” he said, giving the example that “If God forbid someone feels they’re about to commit suicide, we will refer to Papyrus [a suicide prevention charity], if it’s somebody who is not well, we’ll refer them to Hatzolah. We will have a whole referral system.”

The charity also said it was planning to offer further programmes in the future, including personal safety workshops for children and parents, as well as “professional awareness training in schools to children and teens, with vital information to help keep all our children safe and cared for.”