Residents with questions told to start dialing 211

AIKEN --- Aiken Public Safety officials want the public to know about a three-digit phone number that could prove helpful, and it's not 911.

The number, 211, is a crisis help line and a general information help line with call specialists available 24 hours a day.

"If someone has any kind of question about one of the many services provided in Aiken, he can call 211, and they can tell you what group or organization provides that service," said Pete Frommer, the director of Public Safety.

Too many of those kinds of calls are coming to the department, he said.

"We take here at Public Safety approximately 15,000 phone calls a month coming to our dispatch center," he said. "We find that about 20 percent of those phone calls are for non-city related items."

A 30-day survey recently conducted by the department showed that 2,638 of 15,000 calls to dispatch were unrelated to public safety. They included requests for government agency phone numbers, utility company inquiries, state highway department information and contact information on state and federal lawmakers.

"I think a lot of it is people are just uneducated about 211 and what it really is," Chief Frommer said.

If the dispatchers aren't busy with emergency calls, they try to help the caller. But when the dispatch center is handling 911 calls or radio traffic with police units, the caller is referred to 211.

"We believe that (by) educating our citizens to use 211 for their general information needs, our call volume could be reduced by an average of 88 calls per day," Chief Frommer told the city council in a memo.

Cam Varner, the director of the Aiken County 211 Center, which is funded in part by United Way, said the county's 211 system was launched in 2002.

Last year, the call center had 13,163 calls that ranged from people needing information on crisis intervention to questions about basic health care.

Reach Michelle Guffey at (803) 648-1395, ext. 110, or michelle.guffey@augustachronicle.com.