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

I often do teams calls with noisy children in another room. The microphone automatically removes background noise it’s great if you are working from a cafe etc.

OK that makes sense. I was thinking of one of those chatbots that's basically useless

Whenever a business location is moved, you tend to lose people, never mind anywhere that has volunteers. I am sure the Samaritans will lose a lot of people, and therefore be able to help fewer people than they do now.

Yes volunteering at home will work for some, also agree about the use of a chat facility (not just preference but also you can avoid being overheard), though that will not help avoid a reduced service.

For context, the CEO of the NSPCC earns £195k, and the CEO of save the children UK earns £143k.

A business, rather than a charity, with similar income/revenue, assets etc, would probably pay their CEO more. Although it is hard to make a direct comparison obviously.

What an offensive post.

Did you read what it was in response to? That was offensive

My mum was a volunteer for years after retiring. Part of the enjoyment was getting to know the other volunteers. I think if it moved to larger hubs, she would have lost out on the friendship aspect and wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much. She kept going for as long as possible but eventjallh dementia meant she had to stop.

Some people do not like change

I respect the volunteers & I volunteer myself for various local groups

However, there must be a valid reason for the changes

Perhaps it is to monitor the numbers of incoming calls/online chat more easily ?

Oh thank goodness I've been waiting for Sams to join the 21st century! I was a volunteer and am currently on hiatus due to the fact I can't get to the centre for shifts due to pet commitments. I would love to take calls from home. My branch is one of the smaller ones and it's like stepping back in time, and as for noise cancelling headphones, as if, most of the volunteers use a handset because they don't know how to work headsets, the age demographic is very high and they are very against change of any kind, these plans would literally blow their minds.
Hopefully it won't be too long until I can restart shifts from the comfort of my sofa, I've missed my shifts

It is not going to make any difference to monitoring numbers at all, that all happens automatically anyway

The point is they are not making or selling anything nor do they have to fund shareholders or grow a business.

That doesn't make a difference, if it isn't properly paid you won't have someone capable doing the job.

No but they have other targets to meet and stakeholders to satisfy. It's not necessarily an easier job, and a £110k salary would be several rungs below COO in a profit making business. Relevant skills and time cost money and the right person is a good investment.

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.

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.

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

I dont understand what you are saying here - that samaritans can add other people or that callers can? Are you saying this is a good thing, or a bad thing? Samaritans already offer online chat. Video conferencing is also common for training, etc. It couldn't happen between a caller and a samaritan for obvious reasons, and certainly not if WFH. Text messaging was moved on from some time ago.

well, the survey at my daughters branch has finished, how many could and would work from home? single figures, out of over 140 members. how many could and would travel to the next nearest branch if theirs closed - fewer than 30

Interesting interview on Jeremy Vine about this, starts at 35 mins

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002gggx?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile&fbclid=IwY2xjawMEFHBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHlFqRdM9UK0kJmJN6iDKiZvQDit6g5Ziki81IJevMsVaoxj_PmOx6Cr_MN1u_aem_aNENekJjU4-Rh_LKO_eUTA

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.

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.

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’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.

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.

calls are routed through a national system and sent to the first available volunteer. That is exactly what does happen - there is no time when volunteers in one part of the country are waiting for calls while other calls are unanswered. You say you are ringing your local branch? Don't do that, that would just be an office line answered when the office admins are in, not the line where you get support