Factfile: Sixty years of the Samaritans

Founded 60 years ago, the Samaritans offers a '999' service to potential suicides.

• The charity was founded by Prebendary Dr Chad Varah CH CBE in 1953
• Chad worked from his church of St Stephen Walbrook in the City of London, where he took his first call on 2nd November 1953, during a time when it was against the law to be homosexual or to die by suicide

• The world's first 24-hour telephone helpline, it has grown to a service delivered by more than 20,000 volunteers across 201 branches today
• Someone contacts the Samaritans every six seconds
• More than 127,000 volunteers have answered over 115 million calls for help by telephone, email or text message

• Samaritans volunteers also work with schools, hospitals, homeless shelters and prisons
• The charity has a series of partnerships with Facebook, Google and Network Rail to reduce suicides and provides training to outside organisations