Charlie Care

The walkthrough

How to show the platform working, start to finish, in about five minutes. Two windows, one conversation, and the honest answers to the questions people ask next.

Live · July 29

The one sentence

Someone who has just come out of a crisis opens the app, and within seconds they are talking to a real trained volunteer, in the first seven days, which is the window where almost nothing exists today.

Before you start

Open two windows so your advisor can watch both sides at once. Your phone is the person asking for help. Your laptop is the volunteer answering.

Window 1 · on your phone
The person What someone in the app sees. No account, no name, nothing to sign up for. care.charliecare.app/user
Window 2 · on your laptop
The volunteer console Where a volunteer works. Sign in with your email and the six digit code we send you. care.charliecare.app

The five minutes

Sign in to the console and go on shift Enter your email, then the code from your inbox. Press On shift in the top right. That press is what starts your logged volunteer hours.
On your phone, ask for help Tap the button to talk to a Charlie Care volunteer, answer the two short questions about how you are doing, and you are in a conversation. Point out that the emergency options sit right there the whole time, and that nobody had to make an account to get here.
Watch it appear on the laptop The conversation shows up in the volunteer's list on its own, sorted by risk rather than by who arrived first. This is the part advisors tend to react to. Nobody refreshed anything.
Claim it, then talk back and forth Press Claim so no two volunteers answer the same person, then type. Send a few messages each way and let them watch both screens.
Show the private side Post a note in the team backchannel on the right, and show that it never appears on the phone. A volunteer can ask for help mid conversation without the person feeling handed off.
Wrap up, and show what carries on Press Wrap up. The conversation leaves the live list, and the safety plan and the check ins at 24 hours, 72 hours and 7 days keep going. And if that person writes again, they come straight back to the top of the list. Ending a conversation is never a way to lose someone.

When they ask

What if someone is in immediate danger? If they say so on the first screen, the conversation jumps the queue, turns red, sounds an alert on every open console, and starts a fifteen second clock instead of ninety. 911 and 988 stay pinned for the whole conversation. Nothing is ever auto dispatched, because that stays a human decision.
Does this replace 988? No, and it is built to make that obvious. The emergency options come first and they work with no internet and no account. Charlie Care fills the days after, not the moment of.
What do you know about the person? As little as possible. No account and no name. An email address only if they choose to be checked on later, and that address is never shown to a volunteer, only used by the system to send the message.
Who can answer a conversation? Only someone you have personally approved. Everyone who applies starts locked out, and stays locked out until you promote them after their interview. That gate is enforced on the server, not just hidden in the screen.
Is any of this a record we have to keep? Every sensitive action is logged with who did it and when. What that means for your obligations is a question for counsel, and it is on the list.

What is not live yet

Worth saying out loud, so nothing in the demo looks like more than it is.