The Samaritans
EVE THOMAS - Mum, Author, Campaigner, Tiny Peacefighter, Survivor!
RSS Follow Become a Fan

Recent Posts

I NEED YOUR HELP PLEASE!
#OneVoiceBuddies & News
What a week! #OneVoice
Goodreads update
Goodreads latest

Categories

#OneVoice
Choices-The Darker Years
Domestic violence contacts
DV CAMPAIGN
General News
The Eyes
Worldwide Peaceful March
powered by

My Blog

The Samaritans

Hi everyone

What a fantastic start to the week, the weather has been glorious!

On 5th May I came across a tweet, a list of worldwide contact telephone numbers for suicide helplines, I retweeted and was amazed when someone responded informing me that the UK line which is for The Samaritans is a premium rate number!  This simple isn't good enough and so I have done a little bit of investigating with the help of two tweeters @mikeywomble and @OCarroll54.  

BT made 2.4bn profit in 2012 and I am currently looking into this some more, surely they could spare a million or two to fund a FREE helpline for The Samaritans?????

As you all know I have been playing around with the idea of a #OneVoice Survivors Helpline, this is something for the future but would be FREE and whilst not manned by professionals it would be by professional survivors who have been trained to take these types of calls, a friend on the other end of the phone.

Now, back to The Samaritans - it costs the following from a BT landline.
Mon-Fri 7am-7pm 12.5p connection charge then 4.032p per minute.
Mon-Fri 7pm-7am No connection charge then 1.021p per minute.

Eircom - Calls cost 6.68 cents per call.

Mobile - Mobile and other providers charges vary.

Taken from The Samaritans website - To be sure how much it costs to call our national and local numbers you could contact your phone provider and ask what the cost of calling different types of number will be as costs for each provider will be different.
The cost of calling the UK national number 08457 90 90 90 depends on your phone provider and your contract with them.

THE SUPPORTER CARE LINE
Costs between 2p and 10p on SOME fixed networks plus sometimes a call set up fee.

Some mobile networks calls typically cost you between 12p and 41p

The Samaritans do fabulous work and it's disgraceful that they cannot provide a FREE helpline, I wonder how many precious lives are lost every week because of this, it doesn't bear thinking about :(

I am currently updating the victims contact page with as many LOCAL Samaritan branches as I can get my hands on, these numbers are CHEAPER to phone than the 0870 number.  Tomorrow I am going to contact The Samaritans to discuss the helpline as I still have my nomination for a charity to give and if they can guarantee it will be used to provide a free helpline then I am more than happy to give my share to them, I shall keep you all updated on the outcome of this.

I trained as a Samaritan and whilst I didn't always agree with the way they "do" things they are a marvellous organisation that safe thousands of lives every year, its just a pity that they cannot provide a free helpline due to financial restraints.

Have a good week everyone.
Eve x
Survivors not victims!


0 Comments to The Samaritans:

Comments RSS

Add a Comment

Your Name:
Email Address: (Required)
Website:
Comment:
Make your text bigger, bold, italic and more with HTML tags. We'll show you how.
Post Comment