Established in 1984, RFHK is affiliated with Richmond Fellowship International, a global network of self-governing charities sharing the common goal of promoting good community care practice in the field of mental health. Driven by the mission to provide comprehensive community-based mental health services for persons with mental disabilities and the community, we serve our users in our different centres, including two Integrated Community Centre for Mental Wellness (ICCMW), which are named ALOHA, in Wong Tai Sin and Island East.
Mental health hotline service: JUSTONE
Our signature community service is JUSTONE, a free hotline service for the public which served 24/7 in Cantonese. JUSTONE is a 24/7 hotline for mental health relief and is picked up by professionally trained volunteers from clinical psychologists, social workers and counsellors recruited by RFHK.
JUSTONE is entrusted with 37,000+ calls last year and is with 10+ years of reliable experience. In particular, the pandemic saw an uptick of 17% in reliance on the service.
Apart from the adult users, due to the pandemic situation, we hope to involve more students in need as well.
An instant messaging platform for mental health relief: JUSTBOT
Building on the success of JUSTONE, we launched a spinoff service JUSTBOT as an online mental health consultation platform. If you don’t feel like talking, JUSTBOT is an instant messaging platform that works just as well and points you to a wellness check and the right resources.
Current challenges
Amidst social movements, the COVID-19 pandemic, mass emigration and resumption/suspension of face-to-face classes at school, primary school children were the hardest hit as they tried to grapple with a complex situation and adapt to a new reality.
RFHK enjoys extensive media exposure on ViuTV and OpenTV. What drives you to participate in storytelling workshops? How do your stories differ from or complement other media?
We started promoting mental health services for children last year and started new initiatives during the pandemic. From our experience, storytelling through video is easier for the public to understand and take action, such as participating in our programmes and learning more about mental health. We, therefore, decide to invest more in social media and mass media promotion.
What is the importance of video in your marketing?
We do see concrete impacts on video marketing. After publishing videos, we receive more enquiries via our hotline. We believe it is because many of us experience stress in different areas of life. As stress builds up, we don’t know how to deal with it, and symptoms develop into signs of depression or anxiety. It is when people actively seek help. Our volunteer phone counsellors may also advise that users seek professional help from psychologists or psychiatrists for their conditions.
With the service award, what kind of stories do you want to tell? How does the workshop help you in the future?
Our biggest takeaway is the startup model and strategies of crafting a story. In the past, we only created videos from our existing skills. Now we learn to narrow down the target audience to improve the effectiveness of reach. In the workshops, we also learnt how people from other fields think, which was invaluable. The workshop materials were practical and helped us execute our plan step by step.
Learn more about Richmond Fellowship of Hong Kong.
