Directors Report – AGM
Firstly, I’d like to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to be your Director. It’s such a privilege and I’ve been hugely grateful for the support you’ve shown since I took over the role in January of this year.
As my predecessor, John did a truly amazing job through quite unprecedented times, keeping the branch going and all the volunteers safe through numerous challenges, including Covid. I’d again, like to thank John for all his efforts. Great to see him here today and back on listening shifts after taking a well-deserved break from Samaritans.
The updates I’ll share with you today will cover the period since our last AGM. Whilst you may have heard some of this information previously, it’s always good to pause and reflect on just how much we have achieved as a branch in the past 12 months.
We have continued to grow in volunteer numbers. Maureen and the Recruitment & Selection teams have conducted three recruitment and selection sessions and 21 potential applicants have been successfully selected. All of our selection interviews are now conducted face to face which gives both the applicant and the interviewing panel a better perspective. However, information session are conducted by Zoom and they have proved to be very successful with the potential volunteers stating that the sessions give them an informed insight into what is involved in being a Samaritan. Maureen intends to continue with these events in the future and with three selection sessions each year.
Unlike a number of branches, we don’t have a backlog of potential volunteers. Whilst interest in becoming a Samaritan at our branch has declined over the past year, we are still receiving a steady healthy flow / stream of people coming forward.
Thanks as always must go to the interviewing panels who give of their time, expertise and experience in the selection process - it cannot happen without them and selection days are an enjoyable experience with a number of Sams together having a catch up, as well as ample tea, biscuits, cakes and chocolate.
The Branch Management Tool is working extremely well and has streamlined the process for the recruitment side and has enabled the role of recruitment coordinator and DD of selection to be combined. Maureen continues to do a great job – super organised and efficient, giving potential volunteers an excellent first impression of Samaritans.
Once Maureen and team have brought volunteers through the door, then it’s over to Jess as the DD for Training.
In the past 12 months, there have been three more rounds of Core development training, one online and two groups back in Autumn Park for (predominantly) face-to-face training. As a result of those sessions we have welcomed into the Branch Debbie 12, Nikki, Sarah 5, Jess 3, Mandy 3, Tom 1, Alan, Ellyn, Ian 4, Fizz, Tom 2, Dave 19, Laura and Tam.
Most recently, our newest recruits, who finished Core development on 29th June and are now coming into the new Ops Room with their mentors. They are: Marie 2, Marie 3, Sarah 7, Faith, Julia 4, Paula 2, Pauline, Chris 21 and Ash.
All of this is only possible because of a fantastic team of willing volunteers as trainers, skills practitioners and mentors. Training wouldn’t run if it wasn’t for all those who give extra time to help the new volunteers along their training journey. They’re a generous bunch and the trainees are lucky to have such a supportive team of Sams behind them. Huge thank you to everyone that has helped out this year.
In that time two full Embedding Development sessions have also been completed (thank you to Richard 5 for all his hard work here), alongside more mentoring training, more shift leader
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training and some ESOB/ESOS training thanks to Carole 4.
We are in the process of relaunching Continuous Development and under the direction of Martyn, the first stage of that programme, Ongoing Mentoring, is currently being rolled out. Using a team of trained mentors, we will now be carrying out mentored shifts every year for all members of the Branch. There will be more continuous development training and group discussion opportunities to follow as well. More information will be coming out on this soon. The whole core development programme went through an update via central office in January 2022. The new materials are great and we’ve seen some positive improvements to the quality of training as a result. I would encourage everyone to remain familiar with the Samaritans Learning site – there are some useful resources on there to help keep you up to speed with what’s going on in training and Samaritans as a whole. The most recent mandatory training “Applying our key policies” was well received and is going to be the springboard for further training later this year.
We’ve also seen the addition of a new training library in the Branch this year – thank you to Jess for the excellent selection of books and to everyone that showed their appreciation for the books.
We are hoping to run another round of core development in the Autumn. Anyone interested in helping with any elements of training should get in touch with Jess 1 –extra helpers are most welcome.
Whilst we’re here to support our callers, we’re also here to support each other. Mavis, Lynn & Fran as our Volunteer Care team have had a very busy year. Several volunteers have had support after their operations, illnesses, family and personal matters, not to mention Covid rearing its head many times. Mavis and her willing helpers ring each volunteer periodically for a general chat and at least 2 text messages are sent to those who they’ve not managed to speak to. Fran sends out the Birthday cards, Lynn keeps up to date with news of volunteers. Thank you to everyone for putting your trust in the Volunteer Support Team.
I’ve mentioned this a few times, but it is really important that we understand when life gets in the way of your volunteering. Everyone has periods when other matters have to take priority. All I ask is that you talk to someone – either me or the Volunteer Support Team – so we understand what’s going on and can make whatever adjustments are needed.
Looking outside the branch now and our work with Prisons is expanding. During the year we returned to fortnightly visits to HMP Stocken after having to use conference calls during Covid. Gordon continues to do an excellent job as Branch Prison Support Officer (BPSO) and the Prison team has grown from 5 to 8 volunteers. The number of Listeners at HMP Stocken has been steady at 9 / 10. Despite losing some to D Cat prison or release, we’ve gained trained Listeners from other prisons which keeps the numbers up. Selection of current prisoners interested in becoming Listeners is scheduled for July. There is also planning underway with Safer Custody at Stocken to implement the Postvention strategy (which is in Tranche 2), beginning in September.
We have been liaising with Lincoln branch to set up a Listener scheme at the recently opened prison, HMP Morton Hall. Aspects of the running of the scheme have been agreed and selection of 8 prisoners for training accomplished in June. Although we’re working with Lincoln, Grantham is taking on the BPSO role for this prison so we will, in effect, be supporting 2 prisons moving forward.
Fundraising is a vital function for our branch and we’re extremely grateful to Andy4 and Joyce1 for their efforts. Over the past 12 months, we have raised approximately £16,000 from large and small donors alike. We are fortunate to have one regular large donor who contributes
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£10,000 p.a. and this has continued. Interestingly, we have been unsuccessful in securing funding from some sources, as we have been considered a ‘ well off charity’ by having 3 years funding in reserve. We were winners of the Asda Green Token event, raising £500. We have had fantastic volunteer support with individuals raising over £800 in sponsored events. We have been selected by the Lincolnshire Coop to be a community champion in the Autumn and are likely to receive over £1,000 in funding. The recent fundraising at Asda Grantham raised over £230; we were at Grantham Station yesterday and will be at Newark Northgate some time in August, strike dates permitting.
We currently have a joint bid to the National Lottery with Lincoln and Boston, and are considering a LNER funding bid later this month.
These events aren’t just about fundraising – the aim is also to raise awareness and the team continue to work on opportunities within our community. A number of enquiries came out of the day at Asda so please think about your own contacts and how you can get involved in publicity and fundraising ideas.
One of our publicity channels is Twitter. Whilst it’s not for everyone, it’s a great medium for getting out timely messages and my thanks to Joyce1 for becoming our official “tweeter”. Joyce has kindly provided me with a brief overview of Twitter to share with you today as it is possibly the lesser used form of communication by everyone.
Our Twitter account is used to send information about our brand – “Samaritans” and our local identity @Granthamsamaritans, creating a reputable profile. We follow a calendar which identifies Samaritans campaigns throughout the year, interspersed with local stories. Twitter allows us to send short, quick messages or tweets, to our followers. If we provide knowledgeable information, followers will return to our site thus establishing stronger relationships. Our content should be brief, engaging and eye catching, so we use graphics from Samaritans brand centre or pictures featuring our volunteers e.g., Swimarathon, Asda fundraising etc.
We are also able to “tag” individuals or Companies to ensure they view our tweet. This is particularly important, for example, if we wish to thank our sponsors. Our most popular (liked) tweet so far in 2022 has been the post on “Thanking day” in which we tagged David Horne @ LNER, the Community Champion @Asda Grantham and other fantastic companies or individuals who supported us over the last year.
In 2021 the most popular tweet was the visit to Newark railway station, raising awareness of Samaritans and suicide prevention.
If our followers re-tweet our message, this allows us to reach a different audience who in turn may choose to follow us. We are slowly increasing the number of followers– currently stands at 287. The most wonderful endorsement we recently received was a re-tweet in response to our #Talktous campaign “Please, please just talk. These guys (Grantham Samaritans) are amazing please give them a call, you are not alone.”
So there’s been plenty of activity from the various teams in the past 12 months. We are looking to do more Outreach activity, now that Covid restrictions have eased considerably. If you’d like to get involved in taking Samaritans out to our community and raising awareness, then please do let me know directly as this will be a key area for us in the next 12 months. My thanks to Rae for holding the post as Outreach DD for a large part of this year. Although Rae has had to step down from that role due to other commitments, I’m delighted that she’s keen to remain involved in this area.
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The other change during the year has been the introduction of the various Hubs. Caller Support is no longer branch based and my thanks to Jane, Eunice and Julie for all their efforts. We supported one caller for quite some time, and she was hugely grateful to all our volunteers for our time.
Callers who need additional support are now flagged to the Hub by completing the Caller of Concern form on the eLog. This is then co-ordinated centrally which means callers are getting help more quickly and avoids duplication from multiple branches. I’ve been a Leader and a listening volunteer in this Hub since the start back in October and it’s really interesting. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to support callers from home but the technology works well and it’s a pleasure to work with volunteers from across the country. There was a useful video in the recent fortnightly “Sams News” – you might recognise a familiar face so do take a look if you’ve not seen it already.
The email Hub is supporting some of our most prolific email callers and a number of us heard more about the Quality Hub and the listening in when we attended Zoom calls organised by the Region.
There are opportunities to volunteer for all three Hubs, in addition to your volunteering in our branch. If you want to find out more information, there’s lots on Sams Home or come and talk to me directly.
One of my priorities when I took over as Director was to see how we could increase our contribution to the Samaritans service. There are times when callers simply cannot get through to us and whilst increasing our volunteer numbers is a massive step in the right direction, we also needed to see how we can have more volunteers on shift at key times. We’ve therefore successfully made the move to Rooms 3 & 4 at Autumn Park, increasing our Duty Stations from 2 to 5. This move would not have been possible without the incredible work of Andy 3 along with the great support of Carole 4. There’s been a lot of measuring, planning, replanning, etc. and I’m hearing very positive comments about the new set up. Thank you to Andy, Carole, Ash and others who made the relocation possible.
Next steps over the coming weeks will be to review our rota and shifts and you’ll start to see some changes which will hopefully allow more of you to sign up to a shift of your choice whilst also increasing our contribution overall.
Key hotspots – you may hear these referred to as “hours of need” - are 10pm due to the volume of callers and 3am due to very few volunteers on duty at that time. We currently don’t support any night shifts (from 2am to 6am), though we have successfully done a couple of ad hoc (very) early morning shifts which have gone well.
As you’re aware, Carole 4 is leading a small working party to understand everyone’s preferences and is also engaging with other branches to see what works for them. More to follow on this.
Continuing to look ahead, Samaritans launched their new 5-year strategy from 2022-27. There’s lots of comprehensive information on Sams Home, but in summary, there are five priority areas:
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Access: We’ll make sure anyone who needs us can access our support in a way that works for them.
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Reach: We’ll reach more people, in a diverse range of communities so they see us, trust us and know we’re here for them.
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Impact: We’ll push harder to make our voice heard at national, regional and local level
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for maximum impact across the UK and Ireland, working with governments, public services and businesses to make change that saves lives.
- Capacity: We’ll increase our capacity to meet demand for our services, enabling a wider range of people to volunteer and work for Samaritans as one team of valued, diverse,
skilled people, giving them the best support to stay with us longer, and work effectively together.
- Sustainability: We’ll build meaningful relationships with the people and organisations who support us, creating ways for them to add their energy, resources and experience to our work, to ensure our sustainability.
Our aspirations to increase our capacity and refocus our efforts in Outreach and working with our community is aligned with these priorities.
More immediately, we are in the midst of our Branch Review. Thanks again to everyone who came along to the open meeting last Monday and collectively gave Maggie & Olga such a positive overview of our branch. I’m looking forward to the meetings this week with the BLT and Trustees and agreeing our plan.
In summary, I am truly proud of our fabulous branch and everything we’re doing. Thank you for your support, willingness to get involved, enthusiasm and just your passion for being a Samaritan. Please know that I’m always here if there’s anything you want to suggest, comment on or raise a concern. We’ve plenty to look forward to in the next 12 months and I suspect my update at this time in 2023 will be just as full and busy with our achievements.
Fiona Bonser 16 July 2022
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