The call checklist
The Chat Bench — how to take the call, and how to know when it stops being one.
What this call is
Somebody booked twenty minutes and asked us to ring them. At the agreed time you ring, and the two of you talk about the day — the news, the weather, the sport, what's on around town. There is no charge for it and there never will be. Callers must be 18 or over; they ticked a box to say so, and we take their word for it.
You are not a counsellor on this call, and nobody is asking you to be one. You are a person from ParkSyde who rang somebody up for a yarn. That is the entire job, and it is a real one.
The thing to get right before anything else
This service was built because loneliness is real and connection is the cornerstone of a park. That is why it exists, and it belongs in this document and nowhere else.
Never describe a caller as lonely — not to them, not to each other, not on a booking sheet. They did not book a loneliness service. They booked a yarn, and they do not have to declare anything about themselves to deserve one. A park assumes you belong there already.
Before you ring
- Read the booking: their name, the time they asked for, and anything they wrote in "anything you'd like us to know".
- Open today's Fairpaddock. It comes out three times a day, so open the edition that matches the hour you are ringing.
- Have this sheet where you can see it.
- Somewhere you can talk without being overheard, and without needing to rush off.
The three tiers
Read the call, not the person. Most calls are green from the first word to the last, and that is the service working exactly as designed — not a call where nothing happened.
What it sounds like
The news and what they made of it. The weather, the heat, the rain that did or didn't come. The footy, the tipping, how their team went. What's on in town, the show, the markets, the roadworks. The garden. The dog. The grandkids. A recipe. A complaint about the council. What the Fairpaddock said this morning.
What you do
- Stay for the whole booking. Do not wind it up early because nothing important is being discussed. Nothing important is the point.
- Talk back. This is a conversation, not an interview — you are allowed to have opinions about the footy.
- At the end, offer the next one: "Same time next week?"
- Record that the call happened, and the next booking. Nothing else.
Green is not a lesser outcome. Twenty minutes entirely about the weather, ending with another booking, is a complete success and should be logged with no more ceremony than that.
What it sounds like
- Grief that keeps returning — the same loss surfacing call after call.
- Money worry that is shaping their week.
- Isolation deepening: they mention that these calls are the only ones they get.
- Sleep gone, appetite gone, or health fear they keep circling back to.
- Drink or a habit that keeps coming up in the telling.
The word that matters is "recurring". Somebody having a sad day and saying so is not amber — that is a person being honest on an ordinary call, and it stays green. Amber is a pattern you have now heard more than once.
What you do
- Finish the chat warmly, at its normal length. Do not cut it short and do not change your tone. Ending a call early because somebody was honest teaches them not to be honest, and that is the one thing this service cannot afford to teach.
- Then, near the end — and only near the end — offer another door.
"Before we finish — can I mention one thing, and you're free to say no. ParkSyde has counsellors, and that's a different sort of conversation to this one. If you ever wanted it, I could pass your name along and someone would ring you and explain how it works. There's no obligation, and it doesn't change these calls at all. Would you like me to?"
"I'll pass your name along today. Someone will give you a ring to talk you through it — and our call next week goes ahead just the same."
"No trouble at all. The offer stays open if you ever change your mind, and I won't bring it up again unless you do."
The rules around that offer
- Never diagnose. Not out loud, not in the log, not in your own head. You heard a theme; you did not identify a condition.
- Never push. Ask once about a topic, not once a call. A repeated offer is pressure wearing a friendly coat.
- Keep the next booking. Offering counselling must never read as being handed on and dropped.
- Log only that it was offered, and whether they said yes or no. Write down the action, never the content. There is no note anywhere of what they told you.
- If they said yes, pass the name to the coordinator the same day.
What it sounds like
- Any mention of harming themselves, ending their life, or not wanting to be here.
- Any mention of harming somebody else.
- Immediate danger — to them, or to somebody in the house with them.
- Abuse, neglect, or somebody being hurt or frightened where they are.
- Giving things away, putting affairs in order, saying goodbye in a way that sits wrong.
"Heard" counts as much as "disclosed". If something has made the hair stand up on your neck and you are not sure whether it is red, it is red. Nobody has ever been in trouble here for treating amber as red.
What you say — in this order
"I'm really glad you told me. I'd like to stay on the phone with you while we sort this out — is that alright?"
"I'm not a counsellor, and this is bigger than a chat — so I want to get you to somebody who does this properly. There are people on right now, any hour of the day."
"Would you like me to stay on while you ring them? I can wait on the line, or we can ring together — whichever you'd rather."
The lines — free, confidential, staffed around the clock
When it is 000
Ring 000 yourself, without waiting for permission, if:
- somebody is in immediate physical danger right now;
- they have taken something, or the means to hurt themselves is in front of them;
- a child or another person where they are is being hurt;
- they stop responding to you.
You do not need a person's permission to ring 000 for them. If you are ringing 000, keep them on your line if you possibly can, and stay until help is with them.
The rules
- The caller is never left alone with it. Do not hang up first. Do not transfer and go.
- Do not counsel, do not talk it through, do not try to fix it. That is not the trained move and it is not what they need from you.
- The handover is the job. Getting somebody safely to a person who can help is not the moment you failed at the call — it is the moment the service did the most important thing it will ever do.
- Tell the coordinator the same day, before you go home. Record the action taken, not the conversation.
- Then somebody checks on you. Nobody carries one of these alone either.
Conduct
The NDIS Code of Conduct applies to every NDIS provider and worker — registered and unregistered alike. (National Disability Insurance Scheme (Code of Conduct) Rules 2018; NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.) It travels with the worker, not with the funding, so it applies to how you conduct yourself on these calls whether or not the person you are ringing has anything to do with the NDIS.
Worker screening for this role has not been determined and is not asserted here. This is an unfunded community conversation service rather than a funded NDIS support, which may place it outside the NDIS Worker Screening Check requirement — but "may" is not good enough to print in a staff document, and nobody in this document is qualified to decide it.
The owner is to confirm the screening position with ParkSyde's compliance adviser, and whatever comes back replaces this box.
What we never do
| ✕ | Say "I know how you feel." You don't, and they can tell. |
| ✕ | Diagnose anything, or repeat a diagnosis back to somebody as though it were ours to give. |
| ✕ | Describe this call as counselling, therapy, or a substitute for either. |
| ✕ | Promise that a particular person will ring next time, unless it is booked that way. |
| ✕ | Mention one caller to another, ever — including "I spoke to someone else who…". |
| ✕ | Write down what was talked about. We keep a name, a number and a time. Nothing else. |
| ✕ | Mention money, fees, or anything ParkSyde charges for. This call is free and must never become a door into something paid. |
| ✕ | Let a caller believe they are talking to a machine. They are talking to you, and if they ask, say so plainly. |
Starters, from today's Fairpaddock
Open the edition that matches the hour before you dial. If the conversation stalls, it is almost always because nobody has put something on the table — so put something on the table.
- "Did you see what the Fairpaddock had this morning about…?"
- "What's the weather doing out your window?"
- "Did you get to watch the game on the weekend?"
- "Who are you tipping this round?"
- "Anything on in town this week you'd go to?"
- "How's the garden coping with this heat?"
- "Have you got a dog? What's it called?"
- "What did you make of that story about…?"
- "Are you a cook? What's the thing you make best?"
- "Where did you grow up — were you always in Rocky?"
- "Have they finished those roadworks near you yet?"
- "What did you used to do for work?"
The only measure of whether this worked is whether they want the next call.
Not how many calls we made. Not whether anybody improved. Not a score out of ten for anybody's mood. We do not ask callers to rate anything, we do not measure loneliness, and we make no claims about what these calls achieve. If they book another one, the service worked.
The name and the support-line numbers on this sheet are rendered from the park's single source of truth (life/park-data.js), so a printed copy cannot drift from the website.