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

Training has been cancelled in my DDs branch next month, all applicants have pulled out following the media reports of branches closing

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.

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

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

And fundamentally, it's about saving lives not about pandering to what current volunteers want things to be like

But if you don't keep the workers on side, there won't be any workers to do the work, so yes, obviously you do have to look after your workers if you want the work to be done

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

@Darker

The volunteers of GG were appalled. Looks like the volunteers of The Samaritans feel the same.

If they don't have the money to continue running the service as is, what choice do they have but to look at alternatives.

It's shit. I work for a charity myself, we've lost funding and it's closing. Many organisations in the voluntary sector are in difficulties and having to make difficult choices.

I’m really sorry to hear this. I also work for a charity and it’s horrible at the moment.

Nobody likes change though, and volunteers are often invested in their part of the organisation without seeing the whole. The Samaritans aren’t the first helpline to move to a hub model of delivery, they’re about 15/20 years behind others.

It can’t be cost effective or consistent to operate so many bases with widely different numbers of volunteers and while it can feel distasteful to think about efficiencies in such a service, the reality is they need to respond to more people with less money. How would you propose they do that?

Absolutely agree, OP, that it is a dreadful shame. But I think highlighting things like the COO’s salary (you need to attract experienced people and that salary is about normal for the role in the sector) is looking at things in the wrong way. Don’t blame the organisation or those running it - unless there is clear incompetence or worse - they are doing their best to react and survive in awful conditions.

There is a huge financial crisis both for the not for profit and profit making businesses. Just as the cost of living crisis is hitting individuals it is also crippling charities and small to medium businesses (and large!) - costs our out of control- rent, utilities, salaries, consumables, maintenance work etc etc - and income is flatlining.

While I totally sympathise with your point, and agree that it will be a dreadful shame, I don’t see the alternative. Keeping lots and lots of centres open is a huge burden and something has to give if they want the organisation to survive.

It’s part of a wider issue about funding and how we (as a country) view what is important. Decades of underfunding the arts and charities and universities and schools and the NHS etc., is destroying them. Investment is needed and governments need to act and realise that investing in these things actually helps the economy and its people. As, the always wonderful, Bill Bryson points out in one of his books, when he arrived in the UK it was apparently completely bankrupt, and yet we had wonderful libraries, cheap public transport, flourishing high streets, a marvellous public health system, incredible theatres and arts, an educational system that was the envy of the world, beautiful public parks and flower beds on our roundabouts. Now we have vast wealth in the country and yet everything is broken.

In terms of finance

I attended one of the webinars Sams are putting on for the volunteers. They did say that the closing of branches was not about money but about creating an environment where more calls were answered

It’s also worth saying that the Trustees who are making these decisions have a number of current listeners in their midst. This isn’t just about faceless people from the centre who have little knowledge of what it’s like on the phones

I think most of us agree that the status quo is not sustainable but my feeling is that they’ve underestimated the branch loyalty and the willingness of volunteers to travel further

As I’ve said before it wouldn’t bother me to take calls at home. I, completely, get why others would not wish to. The support of someone there can be invaluable

But I can’t see why (with the appropriate safeguards in place) it shouldn’t be an option for those of us who are okay with it

It would increase my volunteering hours and I’ve indicated that I would be happy to be part of any trial.

Calls ARE routed through a national system, and have been for many years. So the next available volunteer will pick up the call, regardless of where they are in the country. There is a huge ICT system to support this.

This is shocking, Folkstone branch closed, 3 months later only 15% of Folkstone Samaritans are still working.

The reason given for the closure is "quality and compliance" but no details about quality and compliance of what - possibly disabled access.

Also "leadership" - but many branches function without a director, the director is just there to be point of contact for central office, not much else.

The building itself, which was donated to and owned by the FOLKSTONE branch, is now being sold with the profit apparently going to central office

Which in and of itself makes a shocking headline. But it's meaningless until it's weighted against the number of volunteer hours the move funds. We'll have to wait and see.

Where do you think the profits of a building owned by the charity should go?

Depends on the term of the original donation, but it was not "owned by the charity" as in the central office - it was "owned by the charity" Folkstone Samaritans, who appear to have been asset stripped.....

I am shocked, it this even legal?

What do you mean the number of volunteer hours that the move funds? It isn't funds that are preventing the volunteers putting in the hours, it is the logistics of trying to travel to a different branch