Priority 1: Access
Making sure we’re there, whenever and however someone reaches out to us.
I’ve had ups and downs with my mental health and Samaritans means a lot to me because I’ve called them when I really needed to talk. They calmed me down and helped me see I deserved to be listened to.
Tayler
Making 3 million differences
Samaritans answered 3.3 million calls for help in 2023, one every 10 seconds.
Around 23,000 Samaritans volunteers spent more than 900,000 hours being there for people by phone, email, online chat, letter or face-to-face across more than 200 branches and locations, 150 prisons and at countless events.
People contact Samaritans for many different reasons. Common concerns raised relate to mental health or illness, family, isolation or loneliness and relationship problems. In 2023, suicidal feelings were expressed in almost 1 in 4 calls for help that involved emotional support.
Prison services
Samaritans’ Prison Listener scheme returned to near pre-pandemic levels of support this year, after social distancing hit the service hard in 2020 and 2021. There are now almost 1,500 Listeners – people in almost every UK and Irish prison who are trained to provide confidential emotional support. Together they spent over 27,000 hours supporting their peers face-to-face, while our helpline answered almost half a million calls from people in prison.
Samaritans were a light in a very dark place in life. Although Samaritans cannot offer advice, they kept me strong by being attentive and supportive throughout my years in prison. I spoke to such a range of volunteers! Male, female, old and young, from such a diverse mix of life. I now do what I can to give back to Samaritans, I always will, I owe them my life.
Anonymous
Armed forces
After a successful pilot, we launched the Veterans’ Emotional Support Helpline and supporting webpages this year. This dedicated helpline has increased our trained capacity for supporting veterans, serving personnel and their families. In 2023, volunteers answered almost 9,000 calls from the armed forces community, and since its launch in 2021, around 4,700 people have signed up for our veterans app.
I spoke to a really nice lady who had given her time to be there. So this is someone who’s not being paid, somebody’s who’s there at two in the morning because they actually care. And yeah, I got it off my chest and it felt good. And I didn’t have to rely on anybody else. It felt like a big relief to be vulnerable.
Expanding our services
Our digital services are a way to ask for help without having to pick up the phone, and we responded to more than 196,000 calls for help this way this year.
We continued to improve our email service and opened online chat on Friday evenings for the first time. We don’t yet advertise this service because it’s still in pilot phase, but online chat is now available via our website on six evenings a week.
I used the new online chat feature and just having someone to vent to calmed me down and helped my mood. I felt supported, and my issues validated. I would have been too nervous to use the phone service, so it gave me an option to reach out and have someone listen.
Anonymous
We built on our groundbreaking partnership with Anglia Ruskin University, which sees trained students, staff and alumni volunteering to provide online and – starting this year – phone support. It also offers one-week student placements with the charity for those training for positions that will bring them into contact with people at higher risk of suicide, such as mental health nursing, paramedics and social work.
Passionate Samaritans volunteers in Ireland spearheaded the opening of three new locations in 2023. Supported by Samaritans staff, volunteers found and set up new premises in Castlebar, Carlow and Clonakilty to attract new volunteers and reach more people in these communities where there was no local presence before.
Simon and Vanessa, Samaritans volunteers in Watford