Founded in 1953, the Samaritans focus on preventing suicides by connecting trained volunteers with people who are struggling. <\/p>\n
The charity estimates it answers a call for help every 10 seconds.<\/p>\n
The proposals were revealed in a video message sent by the leadership of the charity to volunteers last week. <\/p>\n
Chief executive Julie Bentley, said while there wasn’t “a definitive view” on how many branches the charity needed: “It’s likely that within the next seven to 10 years our branch network will have reduced by at least half. <\/p>\n
“With less branches, we’ll look to move to fewer but bigger regions,” she added. <\/p>\n
If the charity’s board agrees to the plans at a meeting in September, the changes will begin in April in the UK and 2027 in Ireland. The list of branches which could close has not been decided.<\/p>\n
The Samaritans, considered the fourth emergency service by its staff and volunteers, play a key role in suicide prevention, offering round the clock telephone support to people in distress. <\/p>\n
Volunteers who answer the calls are based in offices around the country, many of which will now close.<\/p>\n
The BBC has been told more than 50 branches, over a quarter of the total, have been raising concerns on an internal forum since the proposals were announced. <\/p>\n
Plans for “virtual volunteering” where people answer calls from home, have sparked fears volunteers could leave the charity due to the pressures of dealing with calls about suicide alone. <\/p>\n
Others only decided to help out due to feeling isolated at home. <\/p>\n
Female volunteers have also said they would be uncomfortable with remote working due to the number of abusive and sexual calls the charity receives.<\/p>\n
In her message to staff, Ms Bentley said some offices were failing to retain enough volunteers and “don’t support the effective delivery of our services to callers”.<\/p>\n
She also expressed concern that too much of the Samaritans’ income is spent on “maintaining bricks and mortars, rather than being used to improve our services”.<\/p>\n
But it is the loss of the intimacy and support the offices provide that worries many volunteers.<\/p>\n
They fear the charity’s proposals will create large, impersonal call-centres in big towns and cities, reducing the likelihood of people from rural areas being able to volunteer and undermining the meaning of being a Samaritans volunteer.<\/p>\n
In its latest accounts, for 2023-24, almost two thirds (\u00a315.3m) of the charity’s \u00a324.6m income was spent on staff costs and less than 4% on land and buildings. <\/p>\n
“We’re not against change,” one volunteer told the BBC, “but they’ve not provided any evidence these changes will improve the charity. It feels more like the professionalisation of the Samaritans.”<\/p>\n
The proposals, if enacted, would also see the charity withdraw from some current activities, including talks in schools and providing the Veterans Emotional Support Line. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Founded in 1953, the Samaritans focus on preventing suicides by connecting trained volunteers with people who are struggling.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-289586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114911816084784382","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}