Samaritans
Thursday 27 March 2025
This week’s speakers were Margaret Haufe and Fiona Braidwood, both Listening Volunteers with the Elgin Branch of Samaritans.
Samaritans is primarily a listening service. Nationally every 10 seconds there is a call to it for help. 23,000 volunteers across the UK in 203 Branches spend a total of 1 million hours a year responding, with the service being available 24/7 via a free phone line. Calls can also come in by online chat, email, mail or by visiting.
The service was started in London in 1953 by Chad Varah and was soon dubbed “Samaritans” by the Press.
Volunteers undergo robust training, it taking a year to be fully trained, with trainees being mentored a key theme. Volunteers don’t provide counselling but can give pointers to other services. There are 15 volunteers in Elgin, numbers having fallen in recent years.
Values are: listening; confidentiality; non-judgemental; people (the callers) making their own decisions wherever possible; and human contact.
20% of calls received are suicidal, with 80% being in distress.
The vision of Samaritans is that fewer people die by suicide. Suicide is the biggest cause of death in young people aged 16-24 and in males under 50.
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Speakers
back Elgin Rotary regularly invite speakers to our weekly meetings. Read about some of them here