OUTREACH

Samaritans of South Devon plays an active role in the local community; reaching out to those who need us, supporting public services, educating, and raising awareness, so that people know who we are and what we do – and how to contact us when they need us.

Statistics show that people in prison are between 5 to 10 times more likely to take their own lives. That’s why we’re in partnership with Channings Wood Prison.

Our Prison Team select and train prisoners to become Listeners, so that they can offer peer support to fellow prisoners to help reduce the amount of self-inflicted deaths and self-harm amongst offenders. Our volunteers meet with the Prison Listeners every week so they can offload and discuss any concerns ­ enabling them with the support they need to provide their valuable service.

Our team of trained volunteers visit local schools to give presentations to students. The aim is to provide young people with an understanding of emotional health, and the importance of talking when things don’t seem quite right.

We also talk briefly about Samaritans and what we do, but the main emphasis is on exploring ways of talking and the importance of finding the right person to talk to.

Would you like our team of speakers to come and talk to you?

If you are a teacher at a school, or a member of a club or society, we would be happy to come and talk to you about the work Samaritans do. To find out more, please email us on [email protected]

In recent years Samaritans have been developing partnerships with some statutory services and other organisations, particularly those who frequently come into contact with vulnerable people. Because we are here 24 hours a day we can provide additional emotional support for those – who might already be under the care of doctors or mental health teams – but who need to talk outside “normal” hours.

And we are working with the emergency services; they, and we, know that people who witness, or are injured in, accidents or traumatic events, often need ongoing support.

Currently, we are setting up partnerships with local GPs, the Psychiatric Liaison Unit, Devon Doctors (the on call service) and Devon and Somerset Fire Service. By knowing what we do and how we do it they can have confidence in our service and will use our confidential and dedicated referral lines to ask us to contact someone they are concerned about or who might benefit from talking to Samaritans.

The same confidential service is available for their staff too; as highlighted all too recently following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, emergency service staff can suffer emotionally too. We want to be there for them.