Breathing space for advice service
cash boost for trauma helpline
Published:
A helicopter company has thrown a lifeline to a volunteer advice service set up to help trauma survivors in the wake of the Piper Alpha disaster.
The Aberdeen-based Sudden Trauma Information Service Helpline (Stish) has helped thousands of people recover from a wide range of major and personal tragedies in the 22 years since it opened.
Its founder, Professor David Alexander, revealed recently that it was so short of funds it would have to fold by the spring unless it could find a financial backer to meet the £30,000-a-year running costs.
Now, CHC Helicopters has donated £1,000 to give Prof Alexander and his team some breathing space to find a more permanent solution. A number of other oil-related companies have also said they would help.
Prof Alexander, director of the Aberdeen Centre for Trauma Research at Robert Gordon University, said he was delighted.
“We are grateful to CHC and everyone else who has shown us real support. We do appreciate we still have some way to go in order to guarantee that Stish continues to operate during the remainder of 2010 and beyond.”
The service was launched with funding from the UK Offshore Operators Association, now Oil and Gas UK, after 167 men died when the Piper Alpha platform exploded in 1988 and has been kept afloat with sporadic donations over the years. Its phone helpline receives about 15 calls a month, while its website averages more than 24,000 hits a year.
It helped bereaved relatives after last year’s Super Puma helicopter crash in the North Sea, which killed 16 people, and gave advice to north-east teachers on talking to pupils after a classmate was killed getting off a school bus.
Prof Alexander said victims of “daily traumas” – crashes, assaults or industrial accidents – often felt even more overlooked but still needed practical, accurate information about issues such as filling in tax forms and registering a death.
Nick Mair, commercial director of CHC European operations, said the firm was pleased to have played a role in helping keep the service going.
The helpline – 0845 367 0998 – is open from 10am-1pm and 5-7pm Monday to Thursday, 10am-1pm on Fridays and from 3-6pm on Saturdays. An answering service operates at other times messages will be answered as soon as possible. Information is also available on the website at www.stish.org
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