My neice is a Samaritan. Her role is just to listen and be company to distressed people. She has no answers or advice, just sympathy. She makes herself available 4-8 hours a week, including night shifts, including early shifts which mean getting up at 3am.
She says she expects to feel she has helped around half of genuine callers. What’s on offer is of some value to some people, not to others. What’s on offer if basically a listening ear, nothing more.
She also spends a lot of hours talking by phone or face to face to prisoners. Many prisons lend prisoners mobile phones with only the Samaritan number on, nothing else. Samaritans also visit.
She talk to people face to face too, and goes into schools, food banks, stations ( after a suicide) etc
And she tolerates the most horrific abuse. There are sex callers most shifts. And apart from that , there are other callers who only ring up to be threatening, or nasty in other ways, saying they are waiting outside the branch with a knife, etc. She has had every insult under the sun shouted down the phone at her
She says she can cope with anything, except not being able to understand what the caller is saying. They get a lot of very drunk callers, or very drugged up calkers, which is hard. Also people ring the British Samaritans from. All over the world, and English, and accents can be a problem too