Recognising 60 years of service
SIXTY years of a volunteer-driven service to help islanders who are at their lowest ebb deserves to be, if not celebrated as such, certainly recognised.
The Samaritans mark 70 years in operation this year, and the Guernsey branch, based in quiet Forest Lane in St Peter Port, launched 10 years later.
Then, as now, the branch was staffed entirely by volunteers. And this is no ordinary volunteering.
Specially-trained Samaritans, aged between 20 and into their 80s, will have to be on the other end of the call when contacted by people in despair, those who don’t believe that they can see a way out of their problems. And the cost-of-living crisis is having an impact.
Samaritans as an organisation take 10,000 calls every day, with one in five of these calls from people who are feeling suicidal. In Guernsey the local branch offers support to about 7,000 people every year – by simple extraction of the figures, that must be 1,400 people at their lowest.
Guernsey, through various organisations, has done a lot to raise awareness of mental health and support services in recent years. It has also flagged up where some of those services could be better.
Every death by suicide is a particular tragedy, and those trying to reduce that, through various initiatives, including the Samaritans volunteers, deserve our utmost support.