#HelplinesAwarenessDay2025
Helplines Awareness Day on Sunday 23 February 2025 draws our attention to the amazing support and information that helplines can provide – a real lifeline to many of us at challenging times.
The Jewish community is fortunate to have many helplines offering vital support including Jewish Care’s Jewish Listening Line whose volunteers offer friendly and non-judgemental support to callers as well as Jewish Care Direct which provides information about services and signposting.
Helplines give us direct access to highly specialised support providing us with a space that can help us to find the motivation to make life more meaningful or indeed worth living.
If we find ourselves isolated with difficult feelings of despair or hopelessness reaching out to a helpline offers us a window, a moment to just ‘be’ alongside another human being who has the time to really listen to us. And that’s not just hearing us but actually being alongside us at a difficult soul-searching time to offer us the empathy and connection we may be craving.
We encourage everyone to make a note of the helplines below and help us get the message out across the community that utilising a helpline at a moment of need is a positive, empowering step we can all take just when we might feel at the end of our tether. We do not always want to talk to friends or family about our difficulties and that is why helplines offer such important support and we need to champion them and of course use them.
Often helplines run with the passion and commitment of highly trained volunteers who find great purpose and satisfaction from being there for us when we need them. Take a deep breath, make that call or send that text. Get the help when it is needed and encourage others to do the same.
https://www.helplines.org/find-a-helpline/
Useful Helplines – we have included some for your reference:
Jewish Care
https://jewishcare.org/our-services/helplines
Jewish Listening Line
Telephone: 0800 652 9249
Jewish Care Direct
Telephone: 020 8922 2222
Samaritans
https://www.samaritans.org/scotland/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/talk-us-phone/
Telephone: 116 123
SHOUT
https://giveusashout.org/
Text: Jami to 85258
Papyrus (young people)
https://www.papyrus-uk.org/contact-us/
HOPELINE247
Telephone: 0800 068 41 41
Or text: 88247
Grief Encounter
Grief Talk helpline (bereaved children, young people and their parents)
Telephone: 0808 802 0111
Cruse Bereavement Support
https://www.cruse.org.uk/get-support/helpline/
Telephone: 0808 808 1677
