A timeline of the Headquarters era

How to read this

Entries dated 1969 to 2020 are drawn from the organisation's own published pages. Entries after 2020 are drawn from public reporting and from the successor organisation's current site, and are marked as such. Where the original record gave a year but not a date, only the year appears.

The founding, 1969–1975

1969 · 16 December

Headquarters opens as a community drug-use and abuse centre with a twenty-four-hour telephone line, in a communal house on Massachusetts Street with three live-in student staff. Founding grant: $858.55 from the First United Methodist Church, covering three months.

1970

Incorporates as Headquarters, Inc. and moves to premises on Mississippi Street. A street-drug analysis programme begins in conjunction with the University of Kansas.

1971

The first full-time director is hired. The centre loses its premises and operates for a period as a telephone line in the director's apartment. It runs its first formal volunteer training and broadens into drug information, general referral, personal crisis and suicide intervention. Moves to premises on Kentucky Street; staff no longer live on site.

1972

Begins receiving support from the Lawrence United Fund (later Douglas County United Way) and from University of Kansas student activity fees.

1973

The Kansas Attorney General shuts down the street-drug analysis programme. Community support, funding and volunteer energy fall away sharply.

1974

The county attorney asks the centre to build an alternative to incarceration for first-time drug offenders; the Court Diversion Program begins with twelve of thirty-one arrested people referred without trial. Paid staff begin providing individual and group counselling, guided imagery and biofeedback training. The centre moves to new premises on Massachusetts Street.

1975

Organises Everybody Day, a spring festival in South Park for the whole city. It runs annually until 1985.

Consolidation, 1979–2000

1979 · September

A volunteer since 1975 is hired as director, beginning a tenure that runs into the late 2010s.

1984

The centre moves again, to different premises on Massachusetts Street.

1985

The Phone A Friend programme for children begins.

1986

The centre begins participating in the American Association of Suicidology.

1987–1990

Suicide-related contacts, which had already more than doubled between 1984 and 1987, double again between 1987 and 1989.

1991

Counselling use reaches the highest point in the centre's history: close to eighteen thousand contacts, more than twice the level of ten years earlier.

1994

The centre sponsors a gun turn-in as a statement against impulse suicide. A toll-free line is established covering Baldwin City.

1996

Baker University's psychology department formally adds the centre as an internship site. A collaboration with United Way and the Lawrence Public Library creates a county information and referral system; a long-standing programme relaunches as First Call for Help.

1998–2001

A difficult period of paid-staff turnover and falling volunteer numbers, mirroring trends at centres nationally, alongside work to broaden the funding base.

Statewide, 2001–2013

2001 · March

The centre joins the National Hopeline Network, taking calls from all Kansas area codes.

2004–2005

SAMHSA funds the creation of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The centre describes itself as a founding agency, part of the network from its inception in January 2005, and begins answering Kansas callers to that network as well.

2001 onward

Credentialed by the American Association of Suicidology — at the time the only centre in Kansas holding that accreditation and the only one answering Kansas calls to both national numbers.

2010

Service-use figures published for the year: total use 7.9 per cent above 2009, with depression and suicide-risk contacts recorded 4,492 times — over twelve a day.

2010–2011

The centre's director chairs the suicide-prevention subcommittee of the Kansas Governor's Mental Health Services Planning Council, which publishes a state report and, in 2011, applies for federal youth suicide-prevention funding on the state's behalf.

2013

Honoured with the American Association of Suicidology's crisis centre excellence award.

The last chapter, 2015–2026

2015

A documentary about the centre's volunteers, Listeners, premieres locally.

2016

A published post refers to a financial state of emergency. Everybody Day is revived.

2017

The #saveHQ awareness campaign runs during a funding shortfall; published material states the centre answered roughly twenty-five thousand contacts a year.

2018 · May

Free four-hour continuing-education trainings for substance-use treatment professionals, adapted from a federal treatment improvement protocol, are delivered in Sedgwick, Johnson and Ellis counties.

2018

The organisation publishes statements on the portrayal of suicide in a widely watched television drama, and talking points on imitation risk after high-profile deaths.

2019

The fiftieth year: a move to a new location, several new grant sources, growth from four employees to twenty, an anniversary gala and a volunteer reunion picnic in Centennial Park.

2020 · first half

The last substantive publications on this domain: a Kansas awareness-month post, a COVID-19 precautions notice, and the 2019 annual report.

2022 · July · reported

The national three-digit crisis number 988 goes live. Kansans dialling it reach counsellors in Lawrence.

2023–2026 · observed

This domain lapses. The only captures at these addresses are a hosting-suspension notice, a parking lander and injected junk content.

2025 · 31 December · reported

The legacy Douglas County local crisis line is retired; callers are directed to 988.

2026 · reported

The successor organisation, HeadQuarters Kansas / Kansas Suicide Prevention HQ, operates as the Kansas 988 centre at hqkansas.org.