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
More top news
US has no evidence of direct Russian involvement in MH17
United States intelligence officials admitted that they do not know who fired the surface-to-air missile that downed flight MH17.
Fine start with long spells of sunshine tomorrow
A fine start tomorrow with plenty of warm spells and sunshine, but there will be risk of showers in the afternoon in places.