When King Charles made a personal visit to Sarah Anderson to confer her damehood two days before her death from cancer at the age of 69, she characteristically did not let slip the opportunity to ask him to help The Listening Place, the suicide prevention charity she founded a decade ago in the belief that sustained, in-person support was vital to save many people in crisis.
Anderson had been a Samaritans volunteer in central London for 37 years, but parted company with the charity in 2015 over its then policy, since partially reversed, of no longer offering meetings with an identified counsellor. With the support of a group of other disaffected volunteers including her husband, Terrence Collis, whom she had met at Samaritans, she set up The Listening Place the following year to provide free, face-to-face support for people with suicidal thoughts. Today, the charity offers more than 4,000 appointments a month across four bases in London and has to date received more than 40,000 referrals, the great majority via the NHS.
