About Us

Samaritans in Colchester started in 1964 and in the early years had about 65 volunteers and was not able to offer 24-hour availability. In addition it was often true in the early days that a volunteer could be on duty alone. Nowadays, we never open the branch unless there at least two volunteers on duty and our telephone service is now consistently available 24-hours of every day of the year. Because volunteers sometimes find the calls emotionally draining we make sure support is always available.

In addition to the support we offer callers on the telephone, we are open for callers to visit us and we also support callers by e-mail. We have about a 100 volunteers ranging in age from early twenties to people in their eighties. To enhance our service we would like to increase the number of our volunteers, so do look at our Volunteering page.

In 2008 we responded to over 28,000 contacts from our callers. Mostly our callers choose to contact us by telephone but many prefer to do so by e-mail or dropping in to see a volunteer.

The name of our branch – Colchester, Tendring and Suffolk Borders – describes the area we serve. In fact for all those of you with a ‘CO’ postcode – we are your local branch.

Samaritans has achieved Mental Health Helplines Partnership Quality Standard Accreditation. This has been a long process and we are very proud of having this independent assessment and valuation of the service we provide.

If you want to find out more about the history of Samaritans as a national organization click here