Cambridge Nightline has announced that it plans to reopen its phone service “within the first week or two” of the charity resuming operations for Easter term, originally hoping to be ready “from the first day of term”.

This comes after the mental health service was unable to open at the start of this academic year, due to the loss of its office, forcing a reduced Instant Messaging Service (IMS) to open on 6 November.

Cambridge Nightline is an independent mental health service available to students at the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University, open from 7pm to 7am on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

Following the loss of their previous office, the charity was unable to find a replacement until this academic year.

The charity told Varsity that the new space “facilitated the reopening of our instant messaging service,” but “the phone system provided by the UIS [University Information Services] didn’t work correctly in the new space which meant we were unable to operate phone lines at the time”.

They continued: “We believe that these issues have now been resolved over the Easter vacation, with the wonderful support of our host space and the UIS, and so look forward to reopening the phone service this term.” 

The charity added: “Although we are an independent society (i.e. not run by the Cambridge SU), we rely on the support and generosity of university spaces and colleges hosting our office from which our volunteers take calls and instant messages.”

Responding to the announcement, the Corpus Christi JCR Welfare Team commented: “As a welfare team, it’s our goal to support student wellbeing as much as we can, but sometimes students may be nervous to reach out to college or uni support or we might not be available to chat with them.

“The nightline phone service will be great for providing students with anonymous wellbeing support when we might not be available and will hopefully give students a safe space to speak what’s on their mind.”

While the phone service is currently unavailable, the charity said that its IMS will “operate as normal from the beginning of the Easter term,” providing an “alternative way of talking with our volunteers,” which some users may find “more accessible and less daunting”.

The charity also told Varsity: “Our phone service is really important to ensure our service is accessible to as many students as possible by providing a different mode to contact us. Many students might prefer to talk to one of our friendly, trained student volunteers on the phone and some students may find the benefits of talking on the phone to be more convenient."

“We would like to emphasise that when our phone service reopens, our instant messaging service will still be fully operational and students may, of course, still choose to contact us via this service.

“Whichever way you choose to contact Cambridge Nightline, we here to listen to whatever is on your mind, 7PM-7AM on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 01223 744444 or http://cambridgenightline.org.uk/.”