PhoneFriend Reaches Out to Latchkey Children

“How many of you have had the experience of being by yourself (after school) without a grown-up there?” Connie Underhill asked about 400 fourth- to sixth-grade students at Topaz Elementary School in Placentia. A forest of hands rose.

Underhill asked students to keep their hands up and raise their other hands if they sometimes take care of siblings without adult help. The “forest” became nearly twice as thick.

Underhill, president of the board of directors for PhoneFriend, the first Orange County help line for latchkey children, took the students’ responses matter-of-factly. In her talk last Friday, she shared ideas on appropriate behavior and safety precautions for children who are home alone. She also introduced the students to a gold puppet named “P.F.,” the new help-line’s mascot.

Children Can Call

Underhill told the students they can call the PhoneFriend number, (714) 524-1000, free of charge for help after school with minor first-aid problems, to hear a joke or just to talk about what’s on their minds. “We can probably even help you concoct the excuses you need to explain to (your) teacher why you didn’t get your homework done,” she said, laughing.

The assembly was the first in a series of school presentations on the help line, which started up last Friday with two telephone extensions at St. Jude Hospital in Yorba Linda, in office space donated by the hospital. (PhoneFriend will operate from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. on school days, but may close during the summer.)

Newport Beach residents also may start a PhoneFriend line soon, Underhill said. And Nancy Noble, child care coordinator for the City of Irvine, said she hopes to launch one in Irvine later this year. The first PhoneFriend project was started by an American Assn. of University Women chapter at Pennsylvania State University in State College, Pa., in 1982. This project became a model for more than 30 loosely affiliated PhoneFriend services across the country.

Underhill’s project, which is sponsored by a nonprofit organization called the Placentia-Yorba Linda Assistance Line Inc., is intended just for unsupervised elementary children in the Placentia and Yorba Linda school districts. Those districts include parts of Anaheim, Brea and Fullerton.

Nancy Claxton, administrator of the Orange County Department of Education’s child-care program, said it’s difficult to estimate how many latchkey children live in Orange County “because parents do not wish to admit they’re leaving their children alone.” However, Claxton added, a recent state survey showed that 600,000 to 800,000 California elementary school children lack adequate before- and after-school care. Eight percent of those children live in Orange County, she said.

PhoneFriend gives youngsters a chance to air non-emergency concerns, according to Underhill, a Placentia resident whom other PhoneFriend board members said was primarily responsible for establishing the local help line. Underhill, a former teacher who is president of both the Topaz and Ruby Drive Elementary schools’ Parent-Teacher Assns., said PhoneFriend is a “warm line” that “really exists just to help the child who wants to reach out and touch someone.” In a sense, she added, each PhoneFriend volunteer will serve as a “surrogate mom.” (PhoneFriend now has seven trained volunteers, and an additional five will complete instruction by late February. The only male volunteer is Underhill’s 16-year-old son, Tom.)

Still, Underhill said, “we won’t be encouraging personal relationships with the child (who calls) . . . because we want him to feel that every person is qualified to help him (and) a lot of these children have problems terminating relationships with people. . . We’re trying to reduce some of (their) stresses and bad feelings . . . to help (them) gain trust and confidence in (other) people” and themselves, she said.

Fingerprint Checks

PhoneFriend workers are subjected to both state and FBI fingerprint checks, Underhill said. In addition, the volunteers must undergo nine hours of training before taking calls. Underhill said she and other PhoneFriend board members and consultants--including family counselors, educators and police officers--teach volunteers how to listen non-judgmentally, build children’s self-esteem and deal with difficult situations.

The PhoneFriend line rang about 50 times during its first afternoon in operation, according to Underhill.

Some children just requested jokes (the volunteers, who had forgotten to bring a joke book, racked their memories for grade-school humor); some hung up without saying anything, and a few “bored boys” called to complain about having nothing to do.

“I think they’re calling just to see if we’re really here,” observed Sherley DeStefano, a PhoneFriend board member who answered calls Friday. Among her callers was a girl who “likes this boy, but he thinks she’s a dirt ball,” she said.

DeStefano also received the only really troubling call of the afternoon. A young boy phoned because “his divorced father blamed him for the divorce,” and he’s having behavioral problems at school, DeStefano said.

She tried to act as “a sounding board” for the boy, to encourage him “to solve the problems himself,” DeStefano said. Toward the end of their talk, she added, the boy decided he would “take one teacher at a time and talk to her and see if he could bring his grades up. . . . I guided him in the decision.”

Underhill said few crisis calls are expected on the PhoneFriend line but some may come from children who have been followed home from school, who feel suicidal or think they’re ill or pregnant. Such calls may require calling police, fire departments, parents, neighbors or PhoneFriend’s volunteer counseling, legal and educational consultants on an office phone separate from the help line.

In responding to children’s calls, Underhill said, “we don’t counter the instructions left by the parent (unless) the child’s health and welfare is really threatened.” However, when the child is in physical jeopardy or seems to be an abuse victim, PhoneFriend guidelines instruct workers to report their suspicions to local educators, agencies or the police.

‘Child’s Confidentiality’

Ordinarily, however, calls will go no further than the person who answers the phone, Underhill said. “Remember,” she told volunteers at a recent training session, “we are trying to assure that the child’s confidentiality is kept.” Calls will never be recorded, she said, because “if a child ever feels he’s being taped, it’s going to destroy some of that trust” that phone-line workers seek to establish.

A record is kept of each caller’s first name, age and reason for calling. (Children’s last names, telephone numbers and addresses are collected only if an emergency seems to exist, Underhill said.) During operating hours, program director Betty Juenemann (also a volunteer) is there to answer one of the PhoneFriend lines and supervise “hot” calls. Juenemann, a Placentia resident with 12 years of experience in community volunteer work, also will tabulate statistical data on callers’ ages and problems.

Underhill said such data, collected between now and June, will assist PhoneFriend in gathering more donations to continue and expand its services. To date, the help line has been granted $1,250 from the Placentia City Council, $3,000 from the Yorba Linda City Council, $13,000 from the Santa Ana-based National Children’s Foundation and $1,500 in private donations from individuals, parent-teacher associations and the Yorba Linda Rotary Club.

These funds, Underhill said, will be used to pay the line’s phone, liability insurance, printing and postage, ongoing volunteer training and promotional costs. Help-line expenses are expected to total $400 to $500 a month, she said.

‘We Think There’s a Need’

No formal studies of area need were conducted before the project started up, Underhill said. The organizers, a small group of local residents, began discussing a help-line service last March. They based their decision to go ahead on their own observations and on what local educators and police officers said. “We think there’s a need . . . by doing it (the phone line), we’ll prove that it’s necessary,” Underhill said. She estimated that more than 11,000 children, ages 4 to 13, live within the Placentia and Yorba Linda school districts and that more than 40% of those children may lack adult supervision after school.

Underhill said PhoneFriend is distributing informational literature and stickers bearing the service’s phone number through schools, libraries and police departments. Later, advertisements may be placed in local newspapers, she said. She does not anticipate parental resistance to the service, Underhill added, “since the use of it is optional and since there’s no charge for it.”

Partly in response to the creation of the PhoneFriend in Yorba Linda, last September Milly Day of Newport Beach became interested in starting a latchkey help-line service for her area. A social ecology student at UC Irvine whose Newport PhoneFriend work will earn her college credit, Day said she also is a mother and grandmother with “a vested interest” in seeing services for local children improve.

The Newport PhoneFriend line, which could serve about 7,000 elementary students in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, may swing into operation in June or September, Day said, once she’s raised about $13,000 to cover liability insurance and other expenses. Sixteen people have volunteered to answer calls, according to Day, and donors have offered office space and money for telephone costs.

“Latchkey is a word that isn’t always acceptable” in Newport Beach, Day said. “To leave your child alone is against the law. . . . I think if we get away from that term (latchkey) and just talk about self-care,” public response will be more positive, she said.

Local police officers consider PhoneFriend a valuable service for children who lack adult supervision. “It gives kids an alternative; it gives them some place besides the police department” to call, said Bud Lathrop, a community relations officer with the Fullerton Police Department. Police officers don’t have time to deal with non-emergencies that young children may experience, he added, but PhoneFriend “gives them some place to get some assistance, or at least hear a friendly voice.”

Dick Machlan, a Placentia Police Department delinquency prevention consultant who is also a PhoneFriend board member, echoed that sentiment. “This seemed like a really good program to us, so we took an interest in it” and provided legal advice and cooperation, he said.

Hot Line Considered

Underhill said PhoneFriend is only the beginning of services her group would like to provide for local children. For instance, by fall a 24-hour hot line (which would supplement, not replace, PhoneFriend) for youngsters between kindergarten and 12th grade may be operating. Running such a service may require raising more funds and training at least 45 volunteers, Underhill said. However, she added, a hot line is necessary because “there are as many needs for kids late at night and early in the morning as there are in the after-school hours.”

PhoneFriend’s volunteers hope to draw public attention to the size of the local latchkey children population, Underhill said. PhoneFriend workers hope, she said, to provide “some evidence that the problem (of latchkey children) does exist, and a little evidence about the magnitude” of that problem.

And, she added, the line may help reduce the area’s population of truants and future drug and alcohol abusers. “I know it (PhoneFriend) is going to make a difference,” Underhill said.