It Started With an Answering Machine: The Warm Line Turns 35
By Victoria Cherniak, MSW, Senior Warm Line Program Manager
This year, we are celebrating the 35th anniversary of Perinatal Support Washington’s (PS-WA) Warm Line with an event on November 7th (10 a.m. to noon in Seattle; RSVP here). This anniversary has us reflecting a lot at PS-WA about our history and the trailblazers who started and kept our phone line ringing and answered, overwhelmingly through the power of volunteers.
The Warm Line was started a mere two years after PS-WA was created, by parents who didn’t want other parents struggling with perinatal mental health issues to go without a place to turn. This was in the early 1990s, when perinatal mental health was not being discussed, and our founders wanted to break that silence and make sure there was a place for parents to discuss the realities of the perinatal period.
We can trace the creation of the Warm Line back to 1991: board meeting minutes from that year include a note about purchasing an answering machine to start the line. It was small and grassroots: these parents, who were PS-WA board members, came together to cover the line and make sure parents and providers had a place to call for information, resources, and support. Sometime between 1996 and 1998, we got our number, which is still used today: 888.404.7763. One answering machine and a small group of parents grew into something that would have a huge impact on thousands of parents who would reach out to the line in the years to come.
The next defining moment in our history came in the early 2000s, when a dad, who had lost his wife to suicide in the postpartum period, started asking what could be done so this wouldn’t happen again. He connected with local nonprofit leaders and providers working with parents, one of whom was Linda McDaniel, the Executive Director of Parent Trust of Washington. They started working together with other community members to advocate at the state level for change. Prior to this, Parent Trust had been working with the Warm Line, referring parents to a Warm Line volunteer.
When that advocacy led to legislation in 2005 and the “Speak Up When You’re Down” brochure put out by what is now the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, the Warm Line’s number was the call to action, the place where parents could receive help. That brochure landed in the hands of new parents across the state, and we went from staffing the line with three or four board members to bringing on more volunteers to meet the rising need.
Another pivotal moment was in the spring of 2019, when I became the first staff person to manage the Warm Line. Until that point, for 28 years, the line had been entirely run and managed by volunteers. It was an amazing group of volunteers, always with a volunteer in charge of training and managing the line and supporting the volunteers answering it, no small task.
I think about everything it takes to manage a line, to answer a line, and to support people who are really struggling, and all the places where this line could have gone under. Over those 28 years, so many things could have caused the line to close, from not having enough volunteers to staff it to so much more. But these volunteers were relentless in keeping it going. That is the power of volunteers and the power of parents, who are building safety nets to fill the gaps our society has left. We on the Warm Line and at PS-WA are so grateful for all of the work they did to get the line to where it is today.
In the fall of 2019, we started our Spanish Warm Line, with Aida Juarez as our second staff member tasked with answering messages left on the Spanish line. In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic hit and isolation grew, parents could text the Warm Line, and we started answering live, with Danielle Yamamoto, now our Operations Director, taking calls during business hours. We quickly saw the need to have volunteers answering calls live, not just in the evenings and weekends.
In 2022, we received funding from the state legislature for the Warm Line, which has been key to helping our program expand to meet the need across the state. With that funding, we grew our staff, including a full-time staff member to answer the Spanish line live during business hours and a Dad Peer Support Specialist.
When I began managing the Warm Line over seven years ago, we had eight volunteers, and now we have eight staff (full and part time), four to six social work interns, and anywhere from 25 to 35 volunteers. We have a lot of peers, parents with lived experience, showing up to support parents who call us to talk about what they’re struggling with. Inquiries to the Warm Line have gone from 13 a month in 2018 to 106 a month in 2026, an increase of over 700%.
I hope everyone who has been a part of this line, whether staffing it, advocating for it, referring to it, funding it, or using it, can come and celebrate with us. I am a big fan of all of you who made this possible, so that today we are on the other end of the phone for more than a thousand parents a year who reach out to us looking for support, resources, therapists, and a listening ear. We provide an essential, non-judgmental space and connection to break the isolation and silence that surround perinatal mental health. It all started with one answering machine and a group of parents. Please join us on November 7th!