Samaritans

At Samaritans, our vision is that fewer people die by suicide. With more than 20,000 volunteers across 201 branches, we offer a unique 24-hour listening service for anyone who’s struggling to cope. We answer a call for help every six seconds.

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Our work in suicide prevention

At Samaritans, we provide a unique 24-hour listening service across the UK and Ireland. Every year, we answer more than 5 million calls for help by phone, email, SMS, letter, face to face or through our Welsh language service

Samaritans volunteers may also work alongside local services or support people at events and festivals. Some of our branches have partnerships with A&E departments, mental health teams or GP surgeries so they can support patients and their families. We also work to improve support for people bereaved by suicide. And if a tragedy or natural disaster affects a community, we may go out to offer support to local people, or work alongside police or emergency services

We run peer support in prisons called the Listener scheme, which exists in nearly every prison across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. Listeners are selected, trained and supported by volunteers from a nearby Samaritans branch, so that they can provide support for their peers in prison.

We give talks, run workshops and provide materials for schools to help children and young people understand and cope with their own feelings and respect other people’s feelings. We also offer support for schools if there’s been a suicide in the school community.

We work in partnership with Network Rail and the wider rail industry to reduce suicide on the railways. We train railway staff to help people who appear to beat risk at a station. We might be asked to visit a station to support rail staff and the travelling public following an incident. We are developing partnerships with other sectors and industries where there is a high risk of suicide.

We develop learning tools to help people in the workplace support colleagues who might be going through a tough time and also look after their own wellbeing. We also provide training in workplaces, sharing our skills and experience in talking about difficult issues and helping people cope with their feelings. We are developing a programme of support for military personnel, reservists, veterans and their families.

Our influencing work is about engaging with the Government and others in positions of power to make sure that they are doing everything possible to prevent suicide. We do this by working with Parliamentarians and other influential contacts to improve policy and the law, as well as working with journalists to promote responsible reporting of suicide. We undertake research ourselves and use the best available evidence from others to inform all our work across services and influencing.

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Our current priorities

To increase the number of people contacting us and our ability to answer those contacts by making sure that a high quality emotional support service is available through phone, text, email, letter and in person.

We aim to continue reaching high-risk groups and communities to reduce suicide risk while fostering partnerships at local and national levels. This includes expanding our Network Rail Partnership through ongoing research and evaluation, advancing evaluation of the Samaritans Prison Listener Scheme, and collaborating with social media organisations, charities, and service users to address suicide in online spaces. Additionally, we will sustain our Step by Step programme in schools, offering crucial postvention support.We explore new channels for service delivery including the potential to introduce Instant Messaging as a way for callers to talk directly to Samaritans volunteers. We can make our service free to callers.

We aim to improve the quality and consistency of our services by ensuring they are responsive to users’ needs and implementing robust quality assurance processes across all services and projects.

We aim to influence public policy and raise awareness of the challenges in reducing suicide by maintaining strong relationships locally and nationally to shape prevention policies, using insights from our callers to guide public policy and encourage help-seeking, collaborating with media to ensure responsible reporting of suicide, and building referral partnerships with agencies supporting high-risk groups.

We strive to be a knowledgeable organisation delivering accessible, high-quality services that adapt to change by demonstrating the impact of our support in reducing suicide, understanding the needs and experiences of our service users, applying evidence-based practices to improve services, and increasing user involvement in all aspects of our work.

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Our current challenges

Inequality and the economy

The UK and Ireland are experiencing economic uncertainty, along with cuts to public spending and social welfare systems. There has been a decrease in people’s material, social and psychological wellbeing, with fewer resources available to provide help.

Lack of understanding of suicidal behaviour and how it can be reduced

Suicide reduction requires multiple organisations across sectors working together. This is hindered by lack of understanding of suicidal behaviour and the perception that responsibility for its reduction rests exclusively with mental health services.

Disjointed and insufficient services

There are gaps in the provision of mental health services for those who are suicidal. Mental health problems play a very important role in suicide, but the wider causes and context of suicidal feelings and behaviour need to be understood and addressed in their own right. There is a lack of 24 hour crisis care and people fall into gaps between primary and secondary care and the emergency services.

The opportunities and challenges posed by our ‘digital’ society

Online and digital forms of communication and interaction have become an integral part of people’s lives, yet whilst the online environment can be supportive, safe and informative for vulnerable people; it can also harbour harmful and dangerous places.

The need for evidence to inform action

There is a large body of research about suicidal behaviour, but only limited evidence about what works best to prevent or reduce suicide, for different groups.

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