Samaritans are offering counselling to jobcentre clients to help them cope with suicidal feelings
Samantha Edwards, Swindon's jobcentre
manager (left) with Linda Morgan, the director of Swindon district Samaritans.
Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
A branch of Samaritans has set up an outreach service in a local Jobcentre
Plus to provide counselling and emotional support to people struggling to find a
job.
It was the growing number of calls from unemployed people that led Swindon Samaritans to pilot the scheme, says branch director Linda Morgan.
"We knew that a lot of the people we spoke to were also people using Jobcentre Plus and we wanted to find a way to work with them," she says. The local jobcentre invited two volunteers to come in one day a week to offer an emotional support service to customers.
The volunteers based themselves in an open plan waiting area and asked people how they were coping and if they were aware of the Samaritans. "You can't tell how somebody is really feeling by looking at them, so we approach everybody," says Morgan. Contact varied from a brief handover of cards and leaflets, to in-depth conversations about people's states of mind in private rooms if needed.
Proactively approaching the public is a big departure from the traditional Samaritans telephone and email support services, but the pilot, which began in October 2011, has proved so successful that it is now a permanent fixture of the Swindon jobcentre.
In 2012, the Samaritans logged almost 500 contacts with Swindon jobcentre clients. In just the first eight months of 2013, they have seen a similar number of people. Just over half of these approaches were brief chats, and just under half were longer conversations with volunteers offering emotional support. In 62 cases volunteers explored suicidal feelings with people. "We are meeting people at crisis point," says Morgan. But she adds that the Samaritans may not know about everyone who is feeling suicidal because conversations can be cut short when jobseekers are called away to see a job adviser.
For pressured jobcentre staff, the volunteers are providing a useful area of expertise allowing staff to focus on supporting customers to find work, says Sam Edwards, the manager of Swindon Jobcentre Plus.
"I think our personal advisers find it very handy that they can signpost their customer to a service they understand," she says. "They know they're handing over to an organisation that can offer emotional support regardless of what the worry is, because it could be about a lot of different things, not just jobs."
According to Joe Ferns, the Samaritans executive director of policy research
and development, its Jobcentre Plus service is helping to reach the demographic
group statistically at highest risk of suicide: middle-aged men from socially
and economically deprived backgrounds. "Our research shows that the suicide rate
has significantly increased in men in their 30s and particularly in their 40s
and 50s. We also know that incidents of suicide are much higher in communities
where there is deprivation. So we have built up a convincing picture for the
need to target men in these groups," explains Ferns. "The people using Jobcentre
Plus have either just lost their job or are long-term unemployed and either
situation creates a level of increased risk of an emotional crisis because they
are likely to be dealing with a combination of other factors, their lifestyles
might have changed drastically. They may be finding it difficult to adapt or
feeling a sense of worthlessness. We want to talk to people before they get into
a crisis."
In Swindon, Morgan says that men account for around half of the people who are receptive to offers of emotional support. "We are finding that Jobcentre Plus is particularly helpful in engaging with men, because it is a slightly less formal setting and they haven't come there for the purpose of talking about their emotional problems," she says.
"Seeking help through health professionals is not a route that a lot of the people we speak to would necessarily go down and it can be very hard for them to contact an organisation, but by being here we are giving people the opportunity to engage with us without having a whole pile of hoops to jump through."
The Samaritans' strict confidentiality policy means that service users at the jobcentre could not be approached for an interview, but a former Samaritans client, Kevin Shepherd, 48, believes his own dispiriting experience of visiting the jobcentre when he was unemployed three years ago and contemplated suicide, could have been alleviated had a Samaritans outreach service been available. "At a jobcentre you feel you are just another statistic and that staff don't have time to listen to your problems," he says. "I was slipping further into depression and had there been a Samaritans volunteer to talk to I might have taken that opportunity purely because there was a person willing and able to speak to me."
The Swindon model is starting to be adopted across the UK with a new Jobcentre Plus service starting in High Wycombe, and interest from branches in the Thames Valley district, and further afield in Wales.
Says Shepherd: "At the time I wasn't able to rationalise how I felt, but having someone there to unload to may well have been what would have helped to prevent me from reaching rock bottom."
Guardian
It was the growing number of calls from unemployed people that led Swindon Samaritans to pilot the scheme, says branch director Linda Morgan.
"We knew that a lot of the people we spoke to were also people using Jobcentre Plus and we wanted to find a way to work with them," she says. The local jobcentre invited two volunteers to come in one day a week to offer an emotional support service to customers.
The volunteers based themselves in an open plan waiting area and asked people how they were coping and if they were aware of the Samaritans. "You can't tell how somebody is really feeling by looking at them, so we approach everybody," says Morgan. Contact varied from a brief handover of cards and leaflets, to in-depth conversations about people's states of mind in private rooms if needed.
Proactively approaching the public is a big departure from the traditional Samaritans telephone and email support services, but the pilot, which began in October 2011, has proved so successful that it is now a permanent fixture of the Swindon jobcentre.
In 2012, the Samaritans logged almost 500 contacts with Swindon jobcentre clients. In just the first eight months of 2013, they have seen a similar number of people. Just over half of these approaches were brief chats, and just under half were longer conversations with volunteers offering emotional support. In 62 cases volunteers explored suicidal feelings with people. "We are meeting people at crisis point," says Morgan. But she adds that the Samaritans may not know about everyone who is feeling suicidal because conversations can be cut short when jobseekers are called away to see a job adviser.
For pressured jobcentre staff, the volunteers are providing a useful area of expertise allowing staff to focus on supporting customers to find work, says Sam Edwards, the manager of Swindon Jobcentre Plus.
"I think our personal advisers find it very handy that they can signpost their customer to a service they understand," she says. "They know they're handing over to an organisation that can offer emotional support regardless of what the worry is, because it could be about a lot of different things, not just jobs."
Although the outreach work
is a grassroots initiative, rather than a centrally driven Samaritans policy, it
fits with the charity's national strategy of increasing contact with groups
affected by the recession. Snapshot surveys collected from branch data across
the UK and the Republic of Ireland show that in 2008 the impact of the recession
was the focus of one in 10 callers, but by 2012 it was one in six. At the same
time, the government's statistics
show a significant increase in suicide inthe UK after years of steady
decline.
In Swindon, Morgan says that men account for around half of the people who are receptive to offers of emotional support. "We are finding that Jobcentre Plus is particularly helpful in engaging with men, because it is a slightly less formal setting and they haven't come there for the purpose of talking about their emotional problems," she says.
"Seeking help through health professionals is not a route that a lot of the people we speak to would necessarily go down and it can be very hard for them to contact an organisation, but by being here we are giving people the opportunity to engage with us without having a whole pile of hoops to jump through."
The Samaritans' strict confidentiality policy means that service users at the jobcentre could not be approached for an interview, but a former Samaritans client, Kevin Shepherd, 48, believes his own dispiriting experience of visiting the jobcentre when he was unemployed three years ago and contemplated suicide, could have been alleviated had a Samaritans outreach service been available. "At a jobcentre you feel you are just another statistic and that staff don't have time to listen to your problems," he says. "I was slipping further into depression and had there been a Samaritans volunteer to talk to I might have taken that opportunity purely because there was a person willing and able to speak to me."
The Swindon model is starting to be adopted across the UK with a new Jobcentre Plus service starting in High Wycombe, and interest from branches in the Thames Valley district, and further afield in Wales.
Says Shepherd: "At the time I wasn't able to rationalise how I felt, but having someone there to unload to may well have been what would have helped to prevent me from reaching rock bottom."
Guardian
