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Volunteers at child helplines play an important role in providing support for children, so keeping them satisfied during encounters is crucial to continue helping children. The purpose of this study is to understand how children’s perceptions of instrumental and emotional support (partner effects) influence volunteer encounter satisfaction, and whether this effect is moderated by a volunteer’s previous encounter experience and levels of interpersonal and service-offering adaptiveness.

The sample consisted of 377 dyads of 116 volunteers and 377 children from online service encounters at a child helpline. Questionnaires were used to measure satisfaction, support and volunteer adaptiveness. A multilevel model was estimated to test the hypothesized moderation effects.

This study revealed that the instrumental support partner effect positively influenced volunteer encounter satisfaction. This relationship was stronger when the previous encounter was less satisfying or for volunteers with higher interpersonal, but not higher service-offering, adaptiveness. Negative effects on the relationship between the emotional support partner effect and volunteer encounter satisfaction were found after a less satisfying previous encounter or for volunteers with higher interpersonal adaptiveness.

This study contributes to the services and volunteerism literature by providing a unique perspective on the interpersonal influence between volunteers and children during service encounters. In the context of child helplines, this paper illustrates how volunteer encounter satisfaction is a function of the intricate interplay between children’s perceptions of the service encounter and volunteers’ perceptions of previous experiences and their adaptiveness.

The authors investigate how employee social support impacts children’s perceptions of service quality of a child helpline chat service and the chatters’ immediate well-being. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to examine how action-facilitating support, nurturant support and emotional reflections influence the children and to test whether this impact varies depending upon the controllability of the issues discussed.

The authors develop hypotheses about the influence of social support and controllability on children’s perceived service quality and well-being. Chat conversations are coded on the social support given by the employee and the controllability of the issue. Questionnaires are collected to measure children’s service quality and well-being. Using structural equation modeling, hypotheses are tested with a sample of 662 children and chat conversations of a child helpline.

The study reveals that for children chatting about controllable issues, nurturant support and negative emotional reflections negatively influence the immediate well-being of these children. Positive emotional reflections positively influence immediate well-being. For children chatting about uncontrollable issues, nurturant support and negative emotional responses positively influence the perceived service quality.

This study contributes to the services marketing literature by broadening the current understanding of the impact of social support on children’s service quality perceptions and well-being, and by showing how this impact is moderated by the level of controllability of the issue discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the work of the new, free telephone helpline The Silver Line in empowering older people to overcome social isolation and loneliness, and where appropriate refer cases of abuse and neglect to specialist services.

Beginning with a family member's description of how the helpline made a difference to her relative this paper then outlines the rationale, methods and outcomes of The Silver Line, including a role it may play in reducing demand for NHS services.

The paper highlights that social isolation and loneliness can be tackled through a helpline which leaves control firmly in the hands of callers while offering them a gateway to activities and services.

It seems that telephone contact is a particularly helpful way for isolated people to begin to build social contact given that there is evidence of a stigma associated with admitting to loneliness.

Given a straightforward way to connect to others, people are empowered to overcome their own loneliness, improve their well-being and sometimes to rejoin their community. The charity reports that callers to the helpline may themselves become volunteer befrienders (“Silver Line Friends”) providing support to others and gaining evidence of their own value to society. In addition, a friendly chat over the phone can be an enabling link to gaining new skills, such as computer literacy, which may otherwise seem out of reach or irrelevant.

The paper emphasises the importance of this helpline specifically and the wider need for hard to reach, isolated older people to have an accessible stepping stone to greater social contact and a higher quality of life.

This study aims to exploratively compare several characteristics of 330 offending and non-offending Dutch subjects, seeking advice/help from child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention helpline Stop it Now!-The Netherlands (SiN-NL).

With a retrospective cross-sectional design, SiN-NL contact logs between March 2012 and June 2016 were investigated.

Results revealed a few interesting differences and similarities. Contrary to earlier findings, attraction to minors and especially boys did not distinguish offenders and non-offenders. However, intimate partner status, suicidal tendencies and expectation of the helpline differed significantly between the study samples. Also, the relevance of several self-reported CSA promoting and impeding factors varied between groups. The non-offender group more often indicated fear of consequences and avoidance of risk situations to be constraining factors, whilst the offender group more frequently suggested benefiting from professional help and social support.

The results of this study might inform different forms of prevention and treatment programs aimed at similar help-seeking individuals. Because of their perceived CSA promoting potential by help seekers, access to children and substance abuse are important topics to address by operators and taken into account when assessing offending risk. In contrast to earlier findings, sexual orientation did not differentiate offenders from non-offenders and might play a less significant role. Higher rates of suicidal tendencies and need for help and therapy could imply that, compared to non-offenders, offenders require a more cautious approach and additional care.

To our knowledge this is the first study to investigate self-reports of offending and non-offending subjects, seeking advice/help from a CSA prevention helpline.

The purpose of this study is to identify the needs and concerns of older people in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India during the lockdown phase of the Covid-19 crisis. The study also aims to present a viable model for extending needed support through a telephone helpline run by a team of young student volunteers.

The study uses a thematic analysis of the interaction between callers (service users) and volunteers.

The study shows that the main reasons that motivate the use of the helpline are to seek medical advice and to request medical services and medical supplies free of charge. However, the study also shows that other reasons for calling the helpline are feelings of loneliness and the need for psychological support, especially due to insufficient assistance from families.

The study shows the benefits of providing this type of service for older people during a time of national health crisis. The service is cost-effective and offers a one-stop assistance point.

The service also constitutes an avenue for building intergenerational solidarity and empathy between younger and older people. This is especially important for citizens who feel socially isolated and disconnected from the rest of society.

The study offers a model for an easily created resource that could usefully be exported to other geographic settings.

Elder Abuse Response is a UK adult protection helpline for older people which provides a valuable opportunity for monitoring interest in and concerns regarding abuse of older people. This paper provides a descriptive analysis of 1,421 calls to the helpline between April 1997 and March 1999 alleging abuse. The analysis notes types of abuse, age and gender of the victim; gender and relationship of the alleged perpetrator to the victim; and where the abuse was said to have occurred. It discusses possible next steps within the UK for researchers, service planners and providers as a result of the findings in the context of government policy developments.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the obstacles encountered by current and potential entrepreneurs. The authors explore the areas associated with starting and running a business in which entrepreneurs find difficulties. Furthermore, the authors explore which entrepreneurs experience most difficulties. What issues do entrepreneurs in different sectors need help with? What issues do entrepreneurs with different current positions in the labor market need help with?

The authors use a unique database that includes information regarding the questions that entrepreneurs ask when they call a government helpline established to provide information about how to start and run a business. The database consists of more than 30,000 observations during the period from 2005 to 2009.

The results indicate that aside from general questions and concerns, taxes, laws and permits are the issues with which entrepreneurs most frequently need help. The authors do not find any gender differences regarding the need for help. Currently or future unemployed entrepreneurs more often need help related to financing, grants and business plans. Self-employed entrepreneurs need help with issues related to operating the firm, such as questions regarding employment, accounting, permits and laws.

The research provides unique insights into the problems that entrepreneurs encounter during the entrepreneurial process. Hence, the paper identifies areas in which better or additional counseling and support from public policy agencies may be needed to improve the development and performance of new ventures.

This paper investigates the substance of institutions in the context of business ethics. In particular, I test a theory of stakeholder attention to resource commitments by firms that implement the Ethics and Compliance Officer (ECO) position, from 1990 to 2008. Results support the hypothesized curvilinear relationship between resource commitments and stakeholder attention – while both high and low levels of ECO implementation generate low levels of reported ethics transgressions (the former due to good firm behavior and the latter due to stakeholder disengagement), moderate ECO implementation produces elevated transgression reports (due to raised expectations and increased engagement). Contrary to extant theory, results are consistent across both internal and external firm stakeholder groups.