About Samaritans

Samaritans was founded by a vicar called Chad Varah, in 1953 in London. Chad offered counselling to his parishioners and wanted to do something more specific to help people contemplating suicide. On 2nd November 1953, Chad, answered the first ever call to a brand new helpline. He said “In an emergency the citizen turns to the telephone and dials 999. There ought to be an emergency number for suicidal people.”

In December 1953, just a month after launching, the Daily Mirror wrote a piece about Chad and used the phrase, ‘Telephone Good Samaritan’. The name stuck and word spread far and wide. Chad received calls from people who needed support on the phone and face to face, and from many people who wanted to volunteer.

Chad soon realised that the volunteers were able to counsel those in need just as well as he was. So in February 1954, Chad officially handed over the task of supporting the callers to volunteers, and Samaritans as we know it today was born.

Current Day

When Samaritans first launched it was a London-based service. But the publicity created a lot of interest elsewhere in the UK. Several more Samaritans centres were set up in the following years.

Today, there are over 20,000 volunteers and 201 branches across the UK and Republic of Ireland.

In 2017, Samaritans reached more than half a million people through their work in local communities.

The Future

Samaritans is aware that the way people choose to communicate is changing, so they are investing in new technologies to make sure they can reach everyone who needs them in the manner that they want to communicate.