About our branch and to volunteering at Ware
Training to become a full Samaritan takes about six months and involves on line and face-to-face elements. You will take calls when you are ready, but generally after you have finished the first half of training. For your first sessions you will have a mentor to demonstrate call handling and to coach you during calls.
A listening volunteer will never work alone. There are always at least two volunteers on duty together with a leader off-site to support the volunteers on duty. We ask our volunteers to do one duty a week, so in each month that would typically be three day duties and one overnight duty. Over a year we do six early overnights and six late overnights. The day duties are 7.00–9.30, 9.30-12.30, 12.30-16.00, 16-19.30 and 19.30-22.30. The early overnight duty is 22.30 -2.00 and the late one is 2.00-6.00.
Samaritans has offered a listening service in Ware since 1968. We have almost 180 volunteers made up of listening and support volunteers. We have no paid staff - the branch is run entirely by our volunteers. In our branch we provide a 24-hour service 365 days a year by phone and email, and a face-to-face service. We also undertake various outreach activities.
Samaritans is a confidential service and the support and understanding of those close to our volunteers is essential as we never talk about our calls to anyone outside Samaritans.