Edinburgh and the Lothians

Our Vision is for a society in which:-

• Fewer people die by suicide
• People are able to explore their feelings
• People are able to acknowledge and respect the feelings of others

Our Mission is to be available 24 hours a day to provide confidential emotional support for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those which may lead to suicide

Our Values are based on the following beliefs:-

• The importance of having the opportunity to explore difficult feelings
• That being listened to, in confidence, and accepted without prejudice, can alleviate despair and suicidal feelings
• That everyone has the right to make fundamental decisions about their own life, including the decision to die by suicide

Samaritans was established in 1953 to befriend those passing through personal crisis and in imminent danger of taking their own lives. The movement has developed over the years to provide a confidential 24-hour service to those in distress or despair and has 17,500 volunteers in the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

In 2004 we have been marking the completion of our first 50 years. Society and the Samaritan movement have changed significantly over the last 50 years, but one thing has remained the same, or indeed increased the need that people have for emotional support in times of distress. Samaritans deal with emotional pain in all its forms and aim to help people to help themselves by supporting them through their dark times.

Edinburgh branch is available continuously day and night, giving our callers the time and space to express and explore their innermost feelings. Whilst continuing to deliver our service throughout 2004, we have put significant effort into enhancing our internal working practices to ensure that we support our callers and our volunteers in the most effective and sensitive of ways.

Some of the areas that we have improved during the year are:-

• Volunteer training
• Our approach to roster coverage to ensure we are available when our callers need us most
• Volunteer support mechanisms
• Better defined roles for key positions
• Volunteer records
• Structure of our approach to caller care

We continue to have a regular presence in Saughton Prison where we select and train prisoners to be "Listeners". This enables the prison to provide a scheme whereby the Listeners can offer support to fellow in-mates.

During the year our involvement with Edinburgh Council’s "Choose Life" action planning group, which aims to reduce suicide rates in the city, has continued. In September we gave a presentation to their Steering Group with a view to establishing opportunities for joint working with other agencies. This work continues and has recently been extended to West Lothian.

We rely completely on the support and generosity of people in our community to continue delivering our service. I am indebted to the Trusts, businesses and individuals who support us in this way……..thank you. Without them, we simply would not exist.

In this, my last year as Chairman, I would like to acknowledge the enormous privilege it has been to serve the Movement in this capacity. The Volunteers in Edinburgh branch have been a constant inspiration to me and my most sincere thanks go to them for their steadfast support throughout my term.

Derek Brown

Chairman

Our callers contact us in complete confidence and are many and varied. We support callers by email, face to face and the main route of telephone. During 2004, we spoke to almost 23,000 on the phone, saw over 300 visitors in our Centre and responded to almost 2,000 emails.

We continue to promote awareness of our service by publicising it more widely. During 2004, three particularly high profile methods of publicity have been the creation of an Edinburgh "Samaritan" taxi carrying our contact details and a series of radio and cinema advertisements. This is in addition to our regular press advertising and the distribution of posters and leaflets.

The benefit of sharing feelings confidentially with someone is an extremely powerful support mechanism and we hope that people in need will make use of our unique service.

Edinburgh and the Lothians Branch is one of over 200 Samaritan branches throughout the British Isles, 19 of which are in Scotland. As well as our own local number, there is a single national number, which is charged at local rate and should rarely be engaged.

Our outreach is about increasing awareness of our service, and of the fact that we are always here to offer emotional support to anyone who needs us.

A team of dedicated Samaritans, made up of experienced speakers as well as some very welcome newcomers has enabled us to continue this important area of our outreach. This gives us the opportunity to talk directly to a group of people, some of whom may benefit from the service we offer, but may need encouragement to feel confident about getting in touch with us.

As well as explaining about Samaritans and what we do, our aim is to make it clear that no problem could be too small, too trivial or too strange to contact us about. We explain that there will always be someone there on the end of the phone, in person or by email or letter. Since September, we have visited 42 schools, speaking to over 1,500 young people, mostly aged 15 and 16. This year, we have been invited to contribute to several school leavers’ information packs which many schools produce, providing young people with information as they go out into the world. We are very keen to get involved in ways like this in the future.

We have also been invited to speak to various other groups over the past year, including the Rotary Club, and a variety of women's and community groups. Again, this is another chance to tell people more about Samaritans, who we are and what we do, maybe how they could help by supporting the branch through fundraising or volunteering. Whatever the purpose of our contact with any group, we always make sure that they know that if any of them ever need to talk, in confidence and without fear of judgement, then they can contact us.

We have continued to offer follow up support to vulnerable people after they leave the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh following a self-harm incident or suicide attempt. This service has now been extended to offer support to those who are treated in the Accident and Emergency department but not actually admitted to hospital. We liaise with hospital staff to ensure that the service we offer is understood by staff and explained fully to patients. This leaves no room for confusion about the limits of Samaritan support, to ensure that there is never an issue, for example, with the absolute confidentiality we promise anyone who contacts us.

We have some 140 highly committed volunteers involved in the operation of our branch. These men and women give generously of their time and talent at listening and keep our service alive despite all the other demands on their lives. Let’s pay tribute to their selfless commitment, which enables us to run our service, 24 hours each day, every day of the year.

It is vital that our volunteer numbers are kept at an adequate level to support our callers and consequently, much effort goes into selecting and training new volunteers each year, often to replace Samaritans who for a variety of reasons are unable to continue volunteering with the branch. Over the year, we have hosted Information Evenings attended by some 90 people and recruited and trained 27 new volunteers from all walks of life.

Over and above our core service of supporting callers and organising our internal operation, these same people support our activities in:-

• Fund raising – raising the funds necessary to run our operation

• Recruitment & training – of new volunteers and ongoing training of existing

• Publicity – making the public aware of our service

• Prison work – training and supporting prison "listeners" to support fellow prisoners

• Talks programme – speaking to schools, colleges and other groups about our work

• Outside organisations – liasing with other voluntary organisations to extend our service

We are entirely self-funded and are therefore rely on the generosity of organisations and individuals to keep our service open. In a very real sense, this generosity helps to save lives.

Our branch is very fortunate to have an extremely active "Friends" group, led by Ann Curtis, herself an ex-Samaritan. Ann says……" The group of Friends remains small but we are delighted to have recruited one of the young Samaritan volunteers who lowers the average age quite considerably and promises to bring new ideas for our fund-raising activities.

It would have been very hard to match the funds raised last year and we did try two new ventures, which did not meet our expectations, but nevertheless we did have a healthy bank balance. All charities will feel the pinch this year as so much public giving has gone to the tsunami appeal and rightly so. We have always tried to give people value for money rather than merely ask for a hand–out.

We try to vary our activities so that there is something to appeal to most people and so that we, and our supporters, don’t become bored with what we are doing. We are always open to suggestions and will consider anything legal!

We seem to have hit on a winning formula for Ceilidhs. At the Valentines’ one last year we had to close the doors – the next one is planned for 19^th March, so make sure you have your tickets.

We are running a Promises’ Auction on 2^nd April and have again been fortunate to secure the services of Bruce Addison, auctioneer from Bonhams. What we need now are lots of promises to be auctioned. June brings the Meadows Festival, in November we will take a table at the Charities’ Bazaar at the Methodist Central Hall and we are planning a concert in spring 2006 with the Gilbert & Sullivan Society. There is also the possibility of a quiz night this autumn.

We owe a big thank you to all the folk who attended our events and hope that they will continue to do so for some time to come."

In addition to the "Friends", our Samaritan volunteers are very active in helping raise funds, by attending events and doing their own fund-raising activities.

We are indebted to the many individuals and organisations who gave us financial support in 2004.

How you can help us

• By becoming a Samaritan volunteer

We are always recruiting new volunteers and provide full training. If you would like to know more, come along to one of our regular Information Evenings – see page 12 for this year’s dates. If being a "listening" volunteer is not for you, perhaps you may like to help us in a "non-listening" role, such as publicity, administrative areas etc.

• By supporting us financially

We are entirely self-funded and rely on the generosity of organisations and individuals to keep our service open.

You may be interested in joining our very active "Friends of the Samaritans" group who raise money for us by organising fund raising events

• By helping us publicise our service

You may be able to display our posters, distribute leaflets, or publicise our work in other ways

Should you feel able to support us in any of these ways, please contact us through one of the contact points on the rear cover.

This report is made solely to the members, as a body, in accordance with the charity’s constitution. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor's report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charity and the members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

The trustees’ responsibilities for the preparation of the trustees’ report and the financial statements in accordance with United Kingdom law and accounting standards are set out in the statement of trustees’ responsibilities.

Our responsibility is to audit the financial statements in accordance with relevant legal and regulatory requirements and United Kingdom Auditing Standards issued by Auditing Practices Board.

We report to you our opinion as to whether the financial statements give a true and fair view and are properly prepared in accordance with the Law Reform (Miscellaneous) (Provisions) Act 1990 and the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 1992. We also report to you if, in our opinion, the trustees’ report is not consistent with the financial statements, if the charity has not kept proper accounting records, if we have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit.

We read other information contained in the trustees’ report, and consider whether it is consistent with the audited financial statements. We consider the implications for our report if we become aware of any apparent misstatements or material inconsistencies with the financial statements. Our responsibilities do not extend to any other information.

We conducted our audit in accordance with United Kingdom Auditing Standards issued by the Auditing Practices Board. An audit includes examination, on a test basis, of evidence relevant to the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. It also includes an assessment of the significant estimates and judgments made by the trustees in the preparation of the financial statements, and of whether the accounting policies are appropriate to the charity’s circumstances, consistently applied and adequately disclosed.

We planned and performed our audit so as to obtain all information and explanations which we considered necessary in order to provide us with sufficient evidence to give reasonable assurance that the financial statements are free from material misstatement, whether caused by fraud or other irregularity or error. In forming our opinion we also evaluated the overall adequacy of the presentation of information in the financial statements.

In our opinion the financial statements give a true and fair view of the state of the charity’s affairs as at 31 December 2004 and of its incoming resources and application of resources, including its income and expenditure for the year then ended, the surplus for the year then ended and have been properly prepared in accordance with the Law Reform (Miscellaneous) (Provisions) Act 1990, the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 1992 and the charity’s constitution.

Whitelaw Wells

Chartered accountants

Registered auditors

2004 was another very good year for the Branch’s finances. Despite not having the benefit of the large surplus from the Ball in November 2003 and also despite the £10,000 grant, which was given to the regional publicity fund, another good surplus was achieved, not as big as in the previous year, but still very satisfactory.

The principal changes in our income, apart from the Ball, were a legacy of some £40,000, and much higher interest. The latter is due to a higher bank balance, rising interest rates and the fact that a large proportion of our reserves has been invested in a short term fixed rate bond, which carried an even higher rate.

Gift Aid income has also risen and, although still not a very significant item, it does produce a welcome bonus from the Inland Revenue of £28.20 for every £100 donated.

Expenditure rose a little during the year. In addition to the grant to the region, approximately £3,500 was spent on additional publicity, most of it on the "Samaritans Taxi" and on cinema advertising at the UCI for which a further £2,500 is still to be billed in the current year. Telephone costs are down but this is an item which does fluctuate from year to year.

The forecast for this year shows a potential deficit in cash terms of some £30,000 and although this is based on very conservative estimates of income, it amply illustrates the fact that we cannot afford to become complacent about our current healthy finances.

I would like to thank all those individual Samaritans who have contributed to the various fund raising ventures during the year and also, and in particular, to Ann Curtis and the Friends Committee. In 2004 they raised a further £2,500, a very worthwhile addition to our funds.

I am, as always, extremely grateful for all the support and assistance I have received over the year within the branch.

Kerr Baillie,

Honorary Treasurer

Information Evenings – All our Information Evenings are held at 25 Torphichen Street and begin at 7.30pm

Wednesday, 23^rd March

Wednesday, 18^th May

Tuesday, 9^th August

Monday, 10^th October

Monday, 21^st November

Call us on 0131 221 9999

Or our national linkline number on 08457 90 90 90

We are open at 25 Torphichen Street (close to Haymarket Station) for personal Callers from 9 am to 10 pm every day. No appointment is necessary.

Write to: Chris PO Box 90 90, Stirling FK8 2SA

Our e-mail addresses are: jo@samaritans .org

or, for Callers who wish to remain anonymous:

For Callers with hearing difficulties, our national text phone number is:

08457 909 192

A recognised charity

SCO 06778