How Samaritans are using digital and mobile respond to COVID-19

NHS support line

Until recently, Samaritans’ volunteers provided support from our 200 local branches. As the government’s restrictions on movement were put in place, we realised we needed to explore options for volunteers to provide support without travelling to branches.

We were commissioned to offer a wellbeing support service specifically for NHS workers to help them at this most difficult of times. Our new confidential support line brings these two priorities together, allowing volunteers to provide support to NHS workers and volunteers whilst being fully supported through our usual branch structures.

To do this, we have configured and posted hundreds of mobile phones (Nokia 105s) to volunteers. These phones are secure, and the service follows the same policies and offers the same confidentiality and appropriate data protection for the caller as our normal line.

Initially, calls to the NHS are being routed to the volunteers using simple call plans built on Gamma, an underlying part of our telephony infrastructure. We are meanwhile getting Samaritans Link, our new contact centre platform, ready to take over as more volunteers come on board.

Changes to other Samaritans services

• Ensuring continuity and other ways of accessing support - our listening service is vital, but we know that in this difficult time people may need other support as well. One of our priorities has been to create and update our evidence-based online resources for people to look after their wellbeing. Building on this work, we’re also planning to shortly release a new self-help tool that we have been working on with funding from Nominet, The Peter and Teresa Harris Charitable Trust and the National Lottery Community Fund.
  
  
• Learning and development - the service cannot run without enough well-trained volunteers. Our L&D team is therefore urgently developing new training models for new volunteers to be delivered completely online.

Key to the above priorities is our ability to be agile, to reprioritise and reallocate resources in order to keep pace with changes and emerging needs. For example, we were very close to being able to go live with our new online chat service, but we will have to hold back whilst we focus on the new priorities, and until we are able to deliver the in-depth training to our volunteers that the new service requires.

New challenges ahead

The fast-moving situation with COVID-19 has created a set of unique challenges that Samaritans volunteers and staff are working hard to respond to. While we have made progress, there are longer-term challenges that we are just starting to grapple with:

1.) How are the needs and behaviours of callers and volunteers changing? And how should we respond to them? While our research and data teams are working in overdrive to provide insights, it is challenging to do this, with constrained resources, when the situation is changing so rapidly.

2.) How must our digital services and IT estate evolve to reflect the new user and organisational needs? The situation demands a fresh look at our approaches to security, device management and data models.

3.) How should we plan to balance supply and demand on the Listening Service over the medium term? With so much uncertainty about the length of the lockdown period, it isn’t easy to form reliable plans for how to ‘exit’ from the current situation and scale up capacity to meet future demand.

We’re already working hard to address these challenges. With the commitment of Samaritans volunteers and staff – and the support of generous funders – we’re doing everything we can to ensure we can still be here 24/7, 365 days a year for anyone who needs someone to talk to.

COVID-19 charity stories

Charity Digital has joined forces with Catalyst to share COVID-19 charity stories - highlighting the ways non-profits are using digital tools and approaches to change the ways they work and deliver services. By sharing what works, others can learn and adapt themselves.

We’re sharing the most interesting charity digital responses to the pandemic. We’d love to hear how your charity is using digital to respond - so have created a quick questionnaire that should take no longer than 15 minutes to complete.