Samaritans is the charity that prevents suicide through the power of human connection. One in four of us will experience suicidal thoughts at some point in our lives.
We answer a call for help every 10 seconds, providing a life-saving service, every hour of every day. But, the world we live in is changing and what people need and want from our charity is changing too. That’s why we’ve begun a conversation with our network of 23,000 volunteers to explore a range of options to ensure that Samaritans will always be there for people in their darkest moments.
Focusing on our future
Because we know our life-saving work will sadly still be needed in the years to come, we must act now and focus on ensuring that Samaritans can be here to listen, long into the future.
We need to change some of the ways we deliver our services to ensure we have more volunteers available to listen, without judgement, every hour of every day. We will continue to deliver a 24/7 service with our listening volunteers, the bedrock of our service. We want to expand our online chat to also become 24/7.
We want to improve the experience for our callers. Sometimes people have to wait too long, especially in the middle of the night when they are facing their darkest hours. We will tackle this by looking at how we operate including considering some difficult choices about our current structure of branches and thinking about introducing more flexible ways to volunteer to ensure we can continue to encourage volunteers from all walks of life to be here every day and night.
Here for you, 24/7
Samaritans is the charity that prevents suicide through the power of human connection. Connecting people in crisis with trained volunteers who will always listen. People calling for change with those who need to listen. People who’ve been there before with those struggling now.
The changes we are considering would take a number of years to implement and we will continue to be here throughout this, saving lives, every hour of every day.
Day or night
We’re here when life’s too difficult. 24 hours a day. 365 days a year.
Call free on 116 123