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

[Lemniscate8]

The Samaritans have 20 000 volunteers who answer the phone day and night. They are organised into local branches, where they can receive face to face visitors, run recruitment and ongoing training, base local fundraising efforts, and host visiting Samaritans sleeping on the floor to man big events such as festivals and demonstrations, as well as respond to local tragedies. Calls are taken in small sound proofed operations rooms where 3-4 Samaritans take a shift together. They will likely know each other well, and can supervise and support each other. In many cases, the local branches own their own building.

The COO sitting on a salary of 110k, and their team of 300 paid employees have come up with a plan to "rationalise" the service, closing small local branches where every one knows each other and shifts are designed around what fits in with the local cohort, and opening a small number of large ware house type call centres, meaning volunteers would have a long way to travel, would not know who they were working with, and would have no input into setting up shift times that fit in with their lives.

There will also be the option of working from home, without benefit of sound proofing, no guarantee of not being overheard, without peer support or supervision, and with the potential of taking deeply emotional and distressing calls, or even sexually abusive calls from your personal safe place.

I know the Samaritans doesn't work for everybody, but they help hundreds of thousands of people. In the end, it is only one person trying to support another, and there are times when with the best will in the world they just wont click. Most callers report feeling better after a call though. I don't think there is another organisation like it, and it has been there and been helpful for decades.

My daughter has been a volunteer for nearly 10 years, no way could she work from home, it would be completely inappropriate, she doesn't drive for medical reasons and is unlikely to be able to get to a big city call centre. And she and two friends have for years manned a shift set up specifically for them, timed perfectly for morning drop off at the local primary school and a walk back to the branch

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2l23ylv46o

110k isn’t massive for that role and if the COO took a median salary around 40k it wouldn’t save much in the grand scheme

sounds a desperate attempt to balance the books - where does their money actually go? Rents would be my guess - another problem of our screwed housing

That pay cut would save the festival branch, where all the money goes on transport to the festivals. Volunteers camp on site and provide a round the clock service to festival goers, including young teens facing A level and GCSE results at Reading and Leeds for example. No rent at all, for festival branch and for many other branches who own their buildings, although there is rent paid for some branches, many of them raise the rent themselves, nothing to do with central office

I’ve been a Samaritans listening volunteer since 2016 and I would love to be able to do it from home. Especially the night duties. I was also part of the email from home trial and it was great.
Generally people don’t like change, but bigger regional hubs, I think will work well.

I agree with you @Lemniscate8
I live near a motorway that has a high footbridge popular with jumpers.
Sadly, the motorway is closed on a regular basis because someone has jumped or is threatening to jump.

I guess the answer really is more funding for mental health services, but realistically that is never going to happen, so it is vital that access to the Samaritans isn't compromised.

Unlike a PP £110k (round here) is a huge salary.

Your DD is doing a wonderful thing by volunteering with the Samaritans 💐

Doing it from home is not going to be a viable option for most volunteers. You would need privacy, guarantee of confidentiality and total quiet. Not happening in most family homes, or in my daughter's home, for example where she is on a noisy estate and living with a noisy dog!

Plus the fact many vols are not going to want to listen to the horror they have to listen to invading their personal space.

Perhaps if volunteers WFH they could go off script and not sound bored while robotically saying “that sounds difficult”

It's difficult. I was a volunteer some years ago, left because of the increasing numbers of men calling for sexual kicks. I would not do this at home, I don't want those calls coming into my house. I also couldn't do this work at home due to having three kids who could potentially hear my side of the conversations. As to regional hubs, again tricky. Some people can/will travel, some people not. I wouldn't want to travel far as I have too many work and family commitments that would likely prevent this. Also, living off the mainland the chances are a regional hub wouldn't be here so that would be all island volunteers off the books. I agree with OP about the local nature being one of the strengths of the organisation and they will lose something by streamlining.

🤣😂🤣, I mentor new Samaritans through their first 8 shifts and I also detest that phrase.

The person at the other end of the line in the end is only a person at the end of the line doing their best. They are volunteers sitting there because they care and want to try and help

Its not unreasonable that the coo earns a decent salary - and to be fair that isn't enormous these days. You just wouldn't get anyone who knew what they were doing in the role if you didn't pay near enough that.

I do agree about the centralisation though, it seems they perhaps should look at alternative ways to save money, though they probably have exhausted all other options and are just struggling to make ends meet. Times are hard.

Without seeing their accounts, I don’t think any of are able to say that this change isn’t necessary. I’m guessing that rents are the issue, but also potentially no enough volunteers. Perhaps their volunteers are additional work from home - I like many do have a home office and I’d rather be at home than in an office during the night for instance

It'll be a disaster. Already you can wait an hour or more for answer at night.

to be fair that isn't enormous these days

It is. It really is. £110k goes a long way round here. Do you live in London?

No, I live in a poor, rural area. However, 110k for a coo is not enormous anywhere.

I understand that people are giving up their time, but I think the “listening” model needs an overhaul. AI bots could stay silent for 10 minutes, say “that sounds difficult” and after another 10 minutes say “I’m going to let you go now” - that would cut costs. Again, I understand that volunteers give up their time but I don’t know how useful it is - the TrustPilot reviews are as bad as they are for SHOUT, which does use bots.

I think you underestimate how many people would prefer to volunteer from home. As with wfh, there will always be people who would rather be in an office but the majority don't want the commute.

Also £110k is a standard salary for the level of responsibility and seniority of the post. How much do you think would be reasonable?

People can work from home if they choose to already, but don't. For none of the Samaritans I know through my daughter would it be a viable option

I genuinely understand that and would be grateful if it wasn’t so scripted.

Why do people come out with crap like this?

The CEO of a huge charity wouldn't be picking up a shift in Tesco Sheffield if they weren't in that job.

You have to compare like for like. Yes MN "£100K isn't that much" is a cliche at this point but IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE you have to put it in context.

Nobody is arguing that it isn't
OBJECTIVELY a high salary but for CEOs of large organisations it isn't.

Samaritans have over 200 branches. If you slashed the CEOs salary in half and divided it among them that would be £275 extra a year. I doubt that would be the different between being open and shut.

My local branch is in a run down terraced house in a socially deprived town and even then rent for an equivalent size (I don't know if they own it or rent it) would be nearly £1000 a month - with maintenance, bills, etc you're probably talking at least £20k every year. Times that by 200 branches and its probably costing a fortune to run all of them. I know some might not pay rent (if a building was donated for example) but other places will pay a lot more, and all will have bills and maintenance costs.

On the face of it it really doesnt sound great but I doubt they are doing it for shits and giggles. I do think they should have tried it in one region first though rather than going all in - once they lose those properties/volunteers it will be hard to get them back.

That's not an enormous salary for a reasonably large organization. Salaries must be competitive to attract the talent.
And at the end of the day, the working structure must be best for the organization and it's aims, rather than what might suit your daughter specifically. A shame for her perhaps, but I wouldn't assume it won't work. Lots of people do like to work from home.

just calculating off the top of my head - my daughter pays £3.40 to get to her shift. Say that is average. Actually, that is what it would cost to arrive and leave by bus, which many do. Say 6 shifts run a day, 3 vols per shift. 6x3x3.4 x7= £428.4 per week spent on travel.

So if she goes to the nearest large branch which is likely to be maintained /extended, It is going to cost £12-£15 by train, depending on time of travel, and take 2 hours rather than 30 mins each way. so say £13.50 average. To get the same volunteers in to do the same shifts 6x3x13.5x7 = £1701 on travel per week

So volunteers will be expected to spend £1270 more a week on travel between them, and will it save the organisation £1270 a week? I doubt it will save them very much , because they will still be responsible for taxis home in the middle of the night, which will rise to £40-£50 from a fiver.

So they save a tiny amount, and volunteers shell out for a huge amount more. Many vols wont be able to afford the train fair, and will resign on that basis alone

Volunteers at Samaritans, can, and should claim their travel expenses back. I’m at a branch in Hampshire, and the Leadership team actively encourage it.

The problem with small centres and volunteers working around their availability is that it won’t match the times when call levels are highest. It would be interesting to see how many calls go unanswered for la k of resource. I know for ChildLine at one point it was 40%.

Cost is only one of many factors, response rates, ease of recruiting volunteers, consistency of service will all come into it. Change is always hard though so I do sympathise. The COO salary is a drop in the ocean in terms of cost and commensurate with running such a large organisation.

Samaritans has been fighting a losing battle for years, because the current system is unsustainable and ridiculously expensive. Far too many buildings housing tiny numbers of volunteers.
The service needs to be run for the benefit of the callers, not what works best for the volunteers. Something created in the 1950s no longer works in the 2020s, and many volunteers acknowledge that.

They also need to stop expecting volunteers to do all the additional tasks of management, recruitment selection and training - these take up a huge amount of time and, for some volunteers, it becomes like having a second full- time job.
So to have paid staff managing larger numbers of volunteers makes sense, and has been discussed within the service over the last 20 years.

But I agree that the working from home idea won't work, for reasons of confidentiality and also to protect callers from the (rare) instances of rogue volunteers.

I completely agree, OP. Unless the volunteers experience their role as fully human - supported, embedded in community, etc - it feels unlikely that they could offer a fully human service. They will just be like any other call centre worker, dehumanised, robotic, alienated. And speaking to them on the phone will be more and more frustrating, like trying to get someone to actually help you with your broadband instead of just operating a script.

To be honest, I'm one of those people who has contacted Samaritans from time to time and found them very unhelpful (though of course I understand that for others they can be a genuine help). I think that if I was in any doubt about whether to call them now, this development would seal the deal for me: No more Samaritans.

I know someone who has begun working in a paid role on a telephone service that seems to be a kind of mental health version of the NHS 111 service. He works from home and is quite poorly paid. This new version of Samaritans seems just like that, tbh.

Call centre support is the epitome of a soulless society.