to think killing off the local branch structure will kill off the Samaritans

The new CEO will be working with a board. It’s not just one person making these decisions.

I was a listening volunteer for many years and very much valued the in person nature of the role. We had quite a few callers into the branch and it was always so positive to be able to welcome them in as well as see other volunteers. However things do change and perhaps this service needs to as well. Volunteers are so highly trained and are very skilled however working alone at home is something that I would want to caution against.

The new CEO of The Samaritans is the old CEO of Girlguiding. She moved on after wrecking GG.

Taking calls from home could be a safeguarding issue, with no other volunteers around to notice if a volunteer is behaving inappropriately. Could it mean that Samaritans becomes a choice for people who volunteer for the wrong reasons?

I wonder if there could be an option for a ‘virtual branch’ for volunteers to look after live chat or to bolster night shifts, with support/safeguards in place.

I used to be a listening volunteer and agree that this won’t do anything to help attract new volunteers. People join because they want to help but they stay because of the supportive community and social aspect. If this is lost, both the volunteers and the charity will suffer, ultimately leading to a decline in the service they provide.

That said, something needed to be done to bring the individual branches more in line with each other. IME, while the training and the calls should be the same nationwide, the expectations of volunteers differ between branches when there should be standard requirements. The individual branch leaders had too much power to do things their own way and this did not always work well for volunteers.

Taking calls from home is not appropriate IMO, because of the sex calls and the calls where someone is actively harming themselves. Volunteers will not get the support they need during or immediately after the call.

Volunteers do not have to tolerate this sort of call. They can and should bring the call to a close.

Samaritans seem pretty confident that the new model will retail and attract enough new volunteers. I'm not sure why you're so confident they are wrong.

The COO will be a senior, experienced person running a team of hundreds. They are not doing it as a volunteer because its a charity, this is their job. If they live in London or the South East that salary will barely touch the sides.

110k is a low salary. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys, if they paid 60k they would get a manager level candidate who isn't competent to do such a big job.

There will be reasons why they want this change. It might be that a lot of their volunteers WANT to wfh. Or that it saves costs they can't afford

It’s astonishing to me that any woman volunteers for them at all. I had a friend who was pretty traumatised by the things she had to listen to - men masturbating and describing horrible fantasies while saying they felt bad and were suicidal because they wanted to rape children. She wasn’t allowed to hang up. She eventually left because she couldn’t take it any more

It’s astonishing to me that any woman volunteers for them at all. I had a friend who was pretty traumatised by the things she had to listen to - men masturbating and describing horrible fantasies while saying they felt bad and were suicidal because they wanted to rape children. She wasn’t allowed to hang up. She eventually left because she couldn’t take it any more

Gosh. You mean all new applicants? That does seem a shame. The average volunteer stays for 3.5 years I think… and nothing will happen for several years in terms of branch closures.

I’m sorry you have not found the listening service helpful, but having trained over 100 sams I can tell you there is no script.
Ultimately volunteers try their best to connect by being a human, non judgemental presence for many people who often don’t have anyone to speak to or feel they can’t. The service is primarily about active listening which can be hugely powerful in helping people feel supported, seen or working through whatever is going on, but I do think sometimes people expect a chat, counselling or to be guided or asked question. That isn’t what Samaritans are trained to do, ultimately the caller remains in control of the conversation and listeners cannot solve problems.

Volunteers do have off shifts, and sometimes you try really hard but can’t give the caller what they want, just don’t click or the caller is unreasonable in their expectations. I don’t think people realise the nhs signposts to Samaritans but it is not a health service and so is inevitably not going be able to live up to those expectations.

I’m sorry but I think you may have got the wrong end of the stick here. As PP have said there is currently no mechanism within Samaritans for normal call taking volunteers to work from home. People within the listening in team can, and some caller follow up may be done from home ( probably shouldn’t be) and there was a provision during Covid for the nhs/ military support lines to be manned from home, using by clinically vulnerable listeners who didn’t feel safe in branch, but standard volunteering has to be done from the centre.

Maybe it’s too difficult but the choice to WFH would be good for some and awful for others,When it comes to travelling for voluntary work, sometimes it’s just going to be too much of an ask. Due to myself and DH sharing a car now he has retired and him being away with no pattern looking after his Mum I am having to give up one role as it’s a few miles away. I could get the bus but I have secured something else that’s within a 30 minute walk.

I wish calls were routed through a national system and sent to the first available volunteer, which it sounds like this will achieve. The system at the moment leaves calls unanswered while in other parts of the country volunteers are waiting for calls. That's terrible. I've called the Samaritans about 30 times over a space of 3 days during a MH crisis recently and my local branch just rings and rings and no one picks up, no hold music, nothing. I think there's no one there. This was in office hours. This shouldn't be happening when MH services and the general public's first response to anyone having an MH crisis is to tell them to ring somewhere that doesn't have anyone answering the calls in entire towns!

I can see it might be less convenient to current volunteers but it will open doors to new people being able to volunteer who live closer to hubs or who can WFH safely, and will be potentially life saving for people in areas where the offices appear to be empty. And fundamentally, it's about saving lives not about pandering to what current volunteers want things to be like.

I worked at Samaritans for 5 years, the majority of calls were hang ups. The second highest was sex pests. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable dealing with that at home tbh. It was nice having the support of the team.

but I’m assuming a lot has changed since I left 12 years ago, like the text/email service is more prominent . So maybe at home would work better but there would need to be adequate training/supervisin and support in place.

With online chat, a person can add other people into the chat easily

This is good for training & support

Perhaps they are looking at video conferring or Facetime too ?

Or freephone, free WhatsApp, free zoom calls ?

Technology has changed

It's hard to recruit and retain talent. A director could be on 80k. Head 50k-60k. Manager level 40k-50k. Junior 30k-40k.

Take down the top level salary, you depress the other salaries, which only means that your junior and manager staff can't afford to eat and pay travel.

Unless you decide to flatten your entire pay structure.

But then you fail to retain experienced staff as there's no where for them to move up salary wise.

The wider issue is the drop in funding - government funding has been cut cut cut which means there is much more pressure and competition on charities other income streams. With cost of living crisis, public donations are stagnant.

I would imagine decisions are based on how services can continue to be delivered. Whether its radical enough thinking, I don't know.

Wholly agree with you on working from home. I barely manage not to feel traumatised from too teams meetings.

I've used samaritans myself over the years - they are one charity, I'd happily leave money to in my will. Absolutely amazing.

Working in an office together means they can share difficult cases and they are there for each other to support if one has a really difficult call. They won't have that immediate support if working alone. My late MIL was a Samaritan for many years and got myself and my husband involved in our local branch Friends of the Samaritans. We run quizzes 4 times a year and others do many other fundraising activities to keep the branch going. If the branch closes along with many others they will lose loads of local supporters who raise £1000s every year.
The calls taken already go through a more central switchboard so are not all local calls but get sent to who can reply and support the quickest.