Talk:National Runaway Safeline

This article needs help.
It looks like an advertisement for those who might be benefited by this organizations services, not an encyclopedia article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dakane2 (talk • contribs) 02:59, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Being a little picky here, but in case anyone cares to flesh out the history a bit...article states "In 1971, Metro-Help was established to help Chicago youth in crisis as a clearinghouse to connect them with services throughout the region. In 1974, the crisis line received an 8-month demonstration grant from the federal government to expand its scope from a local line to a national call center and a short time later changed its name to National Runaway Switchboard." Somewhat misleading in that it implies Metro-Help changed its name in '74 or '75. It did not. Metro-Help continued to run as a Chicago-area general-purpose crisis line, while operating NRS to assist runaways nationwide. While i was a volunteer there approx 1978 to 1981, MH and NRS calls came in on different phone lines (routed to the same phones answered by the same volunteers) and the service as a whole was billed as "Metro-Help and the National Runaway Switchboard" but casually referred to as "Metro-Help." and yeah, comment above is right; article is basically verbatim official PR. Not necessarily untrue, but not at all encyclopedic. Metro-Help back in the day was rather counterculture--created in part because the establishments-that-be were not serving the population's needs--and we would have ROFL at this article. There was a constant struggle to maintain its principles in the face of the need for funding, and that demo grant & subsequent continuance of NRS was smack in the middle of it all. I wish i had time to devote to a real re-write of the article, or better yet, create a Metro-Help article. Maybe someone else can follow thru? Seeing as how i'm the first person posting anything here since 2014, i ain't holdin my breath. :-D — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.100.201.242 (talk) 00:35, 1 January 2020 (UTC)