Volunteer with Brighton, Hove and District Samaritans

At a glance

Causes

Health and well being / research and care
Mental health

Other details

Geographical remit:

Regional

Objectives

Brighton, Hove & District Samaritans is an independent charity, run entirely by volunteers, that provides emotional support by phone, e-mail, text and face-to-face, to people who are experiencing distress or despair and may be feeling suicidal. It is part of a national network of Samaritans Branches that provide support across the country.

Brighton and Hove has the 2nd highest suicide rate in the UK. People over the age of 40 are particularly at risk of attempting suicide: especially if they are unemployed or at risk of losing their jobs, homeless or at risk of losing their homes and are socially isolated. People can talk to us any time they like, in their own way, and off the record about whatever is getting to them.

Activities

Our main activities are:

Listening: We provide immediate, front-line emotional support to people in despair and distress by answering phone calls, e-mails and texts and seeing face-to-face callers at our centre near Hove station (for numbers see above).
Outreach: We visit community groups, universities, colleges and schools to tell them about what we do in order to extend awareness of our service across the community. We provide emotional support outside the Branch, for example, when suicides happen on the railways and following the recent Shoreham air disaster.
Prisoner support: With prisoners more likely than other segments of the population to take their own lives, we visit Lewes Prison to train and support volunteers there to be ‘listeners’ for their fellow-prisoners. In 2014 we trained 25 new listeners, who – together with existing listeners – were asked for help over 1,750 times by other prisoners.

No current opportunities

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