Media Briefing for 116 123 emotional support helpline
Tuesday 27 October 2009 - For Immediate Release
Today three organisations, including Samaritans, have been
awarded phone numbers, which will provide services of extreme
social value, by Ofcom.
116 123 will be used for an emotional
support helpline, provided by Samaritans
116 111 will be used for a child helpline,
provided by NSPCC (which runs ChildLine)
116 000 will be used for a missing people
helpline, provided by Missing People
This number allocation follows a decision made by the European
Commission to provide a ‘same number - same service’ across all
member states to access services of extreme social value. Each
member states will have a different service provider for each of
their three numbers. Samaritans will be the service provider for
the 116 123 emotional helpline service in the UK.
The 116 123 service
1. Why did Samaritans apply for the 116 123 phone number?
Samaritans’ vision is that fewer people die by suicide. We
believe that offering people the opportunity to talk in confidence,
without fear of judgement, can alleviate despair and suicidal
feelings. Samaritans’ trained volunteers provide 24/7 emotional
support to anyone experiencing emotional distress via our 201
branches across the UK and the Republic of Ireland (ROI).
Samaritans is implementing a new six-year strategy which focuses
on reaching out to anyone experiencing emotional distress, with the
aim to make it even easier for callers to use our service. A free,
short and memorable number offers big opportunities for us to get
closer to achieving both our strategy and our vision.
2. Why is Samaritans the best provider for this service,
compared with other organisations in the UK?
Samaritans has 56 years of experience in providing confidential,
non-judgemental support to anyone in the UK and ROI who is
experiencing feelings of emotional distress or despair, including
those which could lead to suicide. Our service was launched in 1953
as the UK’s first telephone helpline and since this time we have
delivered emotional support 24/7 and are still the only emotional
support line in the UK to do so. Fifteen years ago (in 1994) we
launched our email support service and were the first in the world
to offer a 24/7 SMS text messaging emotional support service.
Samaritans is a charity the UK public knows, understands and
trusts. The new 116 123 number will help us develop the
partnerships needed to reach all groups within society and further
improve access to our service. We have the operational capacity to
deliver a high quality service cost effectively because we have
15,000 trained volunteers working out of 201 branches UK wide,
which is equivalent to £23m per annum of salaries.
The 116 123 number will mean Samaritans can continue to run its
24/7 non-judgmental, emotional support service as usual but with
the added benefit of the number being free and more memorable to
the caller.
3. Will Samaritans still be the service provider in the
ROI?
Samaritans currently provides 24/7 emotional support to anyone
experiencing emotional distress across the UK and ROI. We have been
awarded the 116 123 number in the ROI as well as in the UK.
Samaritans current services
4. How many calls does Samaritans take each year?
Samaritans currently receives over 5 million contacts a year via
phone, email, letter and face-to-face across the UK and ROI.
There are about 50 emotional support lines in the UK providing a
range of services targeted at particular groups or geographies. As
the leading service provider of emotional support, we receive the
vast majority of the calls and are the only organisation to offer
24/7 availability. Because of our volunteer capacity and continuous
24 hour support, we happily take calls from other providers who
divert calls to us when they are closed or provide callers directly
with Samaritans’ number. This is a service we will continue to
provide once the 116 123 number goes live.
How 116 123 will affect Samaritans current services
5. Will the caller still receive the same service?
Samaritans will continue to provide 24/7, confidential,
non-judgemental support to anyone in the UK and ROI who is
experiencing feelings of emotional distress. The only change to the
service will be that it will be free to the caller and the number
has the benefit of being shorter and more memorable. To ensure
Samaritans callers have time to adjust to the new 116 123 number,
we will continue to provide our service via Samaritans current
national 08457 number, which will then gradually be phased out over
a period of approximately 18 months.
6. Do we expect an increase in calls once the 116 123 service
is launched?
Based on a number of assumptions gathered from our experience of
launching Samaritans’ text and email services, we expect call
volumes to increase by 5% each year for the next five years,
following the introduction of the 116123 number.
In the longer term we also anticipate the average number of
minutes per call to rise by 10% as callers will not have to worry
about the cost of the call. When combined with a growth in call
volumes, this could increase the total number of minutes by more
than one third over five years.
7. What operational changes does Samaritans plan to implement
to ensure all calls are answered to the highest standard?
Alongside the introduction of the 116 123 number, Samaritans
will also be rolling out our new call management system, which will
enable us to become more efficient in directing our calls to the
next available volunteer.
The new call management system will also allow our branches to
be more effective when managing their volunteer rotas, making sure
our capacity is more precisely matched to the increased demand
generated by the launch of 116 123.
Operations, funding and costs for the new 116 123 service
8. Will the 116 123 number be free to caller via both calls
made from mobile phones and landlines?
The European Commission is aiming for certain services of social
value to be contactable by the same memorable telephone numbers in
all Member States. Given the social importance of number such as
116 123, the European Commission has stated that ‘116’ numbers
should be ‘freephone’ numbers.
In the UK freephone means free from landlines. However, Ofcom
has decided that the three 116 short-code numbers are of extreme
social value and must therefore be free to callers from both
mobiles and landlines.
All calls made to 116 123 will be free to caller in the UK,
whether they are made from a fixed line, mobile or public phone
box.
9. How will the 116 123 number be funded?
Samaritans is funded almost entirely (97%) by voluntary
donations, but Government will not be providing any additional
funding to aid in the delivery of this vital service.
We are however committed to raising the funds for the first
phase of the introduction of 116 123 and are currently pursuing a
number of avenues to work in partnership and secure funding for the
longer term.
We believe there is no better way for communication providers to
demonstrate their corporate social responsibility than by bearing
the cost of the calls made by their customers, and thereby help us
provide emotional support which may save many lives.
10. When will the 116 123 number go live?
Samarians aims to go live with the 116 123 number as soon as
possible in 2010, and will start by promoting the number on our
website. The number will be rolled out in three phases.
In phase 1:
- We will continue to respond to calls made to our existing
national number for at least the next 18 months so our callers will
know the current number has not been abandoned
- We will continue using our existing hard copy communication
material which has our existing national number on it until stocks
run out so we don’t waste money
- We will feature 116 123 in all new communication material so we
gradually increase
- the promotion of the number
- We will direct all calls to 116 123 to our region with the
strongest capacity for taking additional calls, and this will last
for 12 months
In phase 2, we will gradually direct a number of additional
regions to answer calls taken through the 116123 phone number.
In phase 3, all branches within Samaritans’ 12 regions will
support callers dialling 116123 from the across the UK and ROI,
giving us the capacity to answer six million calls per year.
11. Will the 116123 number belong to Samaritans
permanently?
Yes, the 116 123 number has been awarded to Samaritans in
perpetuity.
Notes to editors
It is the aim of Samaritans to make emotional health a
mainstream issue. Samaritans' vision is for a society where fewer
people die by suicide because people are able to share feelings of
emotional distress openly without fear of being judged. Samaritans
believes that offering people the opportunity to be listened to in
confidence, and accepted without prejudice, can alleviate despair
and suicidal feelings.
Samaritans is a registered charity, founded in 1953, which
offers 24-hour confidential emotional support to anyone in
emotional distress.
The service is offered by 16,534 trained volunteers and is
entirely dependent on voluntary support.
Across the UK, you can call Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90 (1850
60 90 90 in the Republic of Ireland) email jo@samaritans.org, or write to
Samaritans at Chris, PO Box 9090, Stirling, FK8 2SA. Log on to
http://www.samaritans.org/
for more information.