Generalist Telephone Counselling and Social Indicators: a Lifeline to Social Support?

This doctoral project investigates the potential for call data from Lifeline ? a generalist telephone counselling and referral service in Australia ? to be used as valid and reliable social indicators of health. It presents a detailed descriptive summary and analysis of Lifeline's national call data. The work presents a model of generalist telephone counselling and referral use and a new indicator of social need, which is proposed to reflect a community's capacity to provide social support to some of its most socially isolated residents.