Samaritans’ safe space sees busy Christmas
There were 40 volunteers with the Galway Samaritans manning the phones round-the-clock over the three days of Christmas – with a noticeable increase in the length of calls since the pandemic hit.
But surprisingly Christmas day itself is not the busiest on the calendar over the festive season.
“Often people if they have anybody to be with will not be alone on the day itself, it’s before and after Christmas that people get worried about family, relationships, health, being alone, drinking – all the normal stresses and strains in their life,” explains branch director Catherine Emerson.
“And this is a very uncertain time. This Christmas and last they are worried about who they are allowed to see, where can they go. If they live on their own, they would have normally gone to a social club, bingo, a men’s shed – that’s just not happening during Covid.”
The Galway branch of the Samaritans is handling 2,000 calls a week. In November the charity answered 32,500 calls nationally, which was five per cent up on the month before. The number of calls overall are slightly down compared to 2019 before the pandemic.
Some Galway volunteers had to step down due their own health making them vulnerable or they were looking after vulnerable relations. Luckily enough new volunteers have stepped up, training online to take the calls to the freephone number.
There are currently 114 listening volunteers who man the phones three hours a week from the Nuns Island headquarters, with an average of 90 donating their time every week.
“A large proportion of calls last less than 30 seconds. These are people who are not able to talk at that time but want to know when that time comes there is somebody at the other end of the line.
“The average length of call is actually twelve minutes but we’ve noticed since Covid that the calls are actually a lot longer so there may be less of them but the volunteers may be talking for 20 minutes, even an hour.”
Catherine was on duty overnight on Christmas night, while another stalwart Anne Wynne, a former director, was lending a sympathetic ear to callers on her 13th Christmas day.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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