Samaritans in Stratford are like a family but they still need volunteers
IT’S 1am and a woman is on a motorway bridge. It’s not known what will happen next. Is she contemplating suicide? She’s in a dark place and needs someone to talk to urgently. Eventually she picks up her phone and dials a number which will save her life.
The call was answered by Stratford Samaritans which is the second biggest branch in the West Midlands.
Stratford has 156 volunteers from a cross section of society. Nationally, Samaritans has 22,000 volunteers and 200 branches throughout the UK. A call for help is received every ten seconds.
The charity was founded 70 years ago by Chad Varah an Anglican priest and was the first of its kind to offer telephone support to people contemplating suicide.
He pledged to create the charity after taking the funeral of a 14-year-old girl who committed suicide when she started her periods and thought she’d got a sexually transmitted disease. It was the intention Samaritans to listen and help those feeling suicidal and with nowhere to nowhere to turn for support.
Nowadays, Samaritans still provide that vital support 24 hours a day, and volunteers were classified as key workers during the Covid pandemic. It’s moved with the times and will make visits to secondary schools, businesses, sports clubs, music festivals like Glastonbury, and the Stratford branch makes a monthly appearance at the Foodbank to hand out pencils and helpline cards or just talk with people.
Lavinia Derrick, is outreach vice director at Stratford Samaritans.
“I became a Samaritan because I wanted to help people who didn’t have support. There is a desperate need to raise awareness and we do need more volunteers. There’s been a rise in depression among middle-aged men and there are reasons for this. They are renowned for not talking about their feelings and while they might come across as though everything is all right, what they’re doing is keeping a stiff upper lip and will reject the idea of seeing a doctor even though their circumstances might have changed dramatically and particularly if it involves their family or finances and career. For years they’ve been the rock of the family but the children have left home and they’ve had to re-assess their lives. Meanwhile, younger men are different. They’ve had wellbeing and mental health issues instilled in them and they will talk about things. Women tend to talk with friends and family but the important thing is to talk. Our busiest times on the phones are between 10pm and 6am and that’s when people want to talk with the Samaritans and we save lives,” she said.
There can be many causes that edge or push a person to suicidal thoughts and some of them include relationship break-ups, the loss of a loved one, an abusive partnership, the cost-of-living crisis, mental health, anxiety, depression issues, business or work pressure, finances, fear of failure, bullying, addiction, isolation, a very low self-esteem and long-term illness.
But it’s not just older people who are affected by these things as Lavinia explains.
“Covid impacted a lot of children and younger people. There was disruption to schooling and to the A levels. Many students spent their first university year at home in 2020 a situation made worse by not being able to go out with their friendship groups. After Covid we’ve never really gone back to the way it was before.”
Emma Cook, director of Stratford Samaritans said there was a knock-on effect that puts people into a place they don’t want be but feel overwhelmed by their surroundings.
“There are lots of little things. We call them the bricks and there could be as many as 50 but they’ll add up and that’s why we always have two people on shift all the way through each day to take calls from people and we will listening and unpicking the layers to what’s being said. Christmas is a busy time for us. I worked a four-hour shift on Boxing Day and was exhausted afterwards. The calls were wide ranging. Samaritans in Stratford is an incredible place to be and we are like a family,” she said.
According to Emma and Lavinia the public’s perception about suicide changes once they make contact with Samaritans. They may not consider themselves suicidal but after 20 minutes of conversation they might admit to having suicidal thoughts. The greatest alarm for the volunteers is when a caller says they’ve already got a plan as to how they would commit suicide.
Stratford Samaritans will be handing out tea bags next January at Stratford, Warwick, Warwick Parkway and Leamington Railway Stations. The idea behind the gesture is to get people talking over a nice cuppa and that way they can share conversation and not feel alone in the bleak mid-winter when January is a time for the credit card bills to roll in after the fun and festivities of Christmas. It can also be a cold and dark time for many.
The charity is reliant on good will and public donations and in December Victoria Jeffs from Alveston who hopes to become the oldest woman to row the Atlantic on her own to raise money for local charities.
It’s a 3,000-mile journey from the Canary Islands to Antigua and Victoria aims to raise £300,000 in sponsorship, which will be shared between Cyclists Fighting Cancer, Stratford Samaritans and the Youth Adventure Trust.
The telephone call made by the woman on the motorway bridge is a true story and it was Lavinia who took the call from the distressed woman and Lavinia listened patiently and talked with the woman until she changed her mind and drove away from the scene to get help from a relative.
It was another example of Samaritans saving lives everyday.
L Samaritans are there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and you don’t have to be suicidal to contact them. Freephone 116 123
To find out more about volunteering opportunities contact: administrator@stratfordsamaritans.org
