Do you love to lend an empathetic ear?
Be a part of an amazing group of women supporting other women.
The Womankind helpline offers emotional support to women struggling with their mental health and past experiences. Helpline volunteers offer empathy and nonjudgmental listening to the women who contact us over the phone and webchat.
Womankind is an established charity helping hundreds of women every year to improve their mental health and wellbeing. Our wonderful volunteers are the backbone of our organisation. We need you!
Whether you are looking for work experience, community, to learn, develop new skills or fulfil a passion to help other women, volunteer with us!
Training
Our training comes with over 30 years’ experience of working with women’s mental health and will fully equip you to work on our helpline.
Over 6 sessions, our training covers a range of topics from women’s mental health to sexual violence and domestic abuse.
The dates and structure of our autumn training will be:
- Session One - Friday 10th October – 10am-4pm at our offices in Brunswick Square
- Session Two – Sunday 12th October – 10am-4pm at our offices in Brunswick Square
- Skills Practice - week commencing 13th October - 2-hour remote skills practice at home to be arranged with your training triad
- Session Three - Friday 24th October – 10am-4pm at our offices in Brunswick Square
- Session Four – Sunday 26th October – 10am-4pm at our offices in Brunswick Square
- Skills Practice - week commencing 27th October - 2-hour remote skills practice at home to be arranged with your training triad
- Session Five - Monday 3rd November – 7-9pm online
- Webchat Skills Practice - week commencing 3rd November - 2-hour remote skills practice at home to be arranged with your training triad
- Session Six - Monday 10th November – 7-9pm online
- Post-training Interview – to be arranged on a one-to-one basis after 10th November
The Role
Once you have successfully completed the training, you will be offered a place on our helpline. Each volunteer works the same shift every week, with the same volunteers – so you can make friends and support each other on shift!
You can come into our offices to do your shift or work remotely if you have a confidential and quiet space at home.
Your role will be to offer empathic, non-judgemental listening support to the women who contact us on the phone or through our webchat, with calls or chats lasting up to 50 minutes. You will also take more administrative calls, where you will talk about our counselling services and calls where you need to signpost to other services. Our training will fully equip you for this as well.
A three-hour shift includes:
30 minutes to check in with your supervisor at the beginning
2 hours taking calls or chats on the helpline
30-45 minutes to debrief with the other volunteers and your supervisor at the end of your shift
You will also be expected to attend group supervision with all the other volunteers, which runs in the evening on alternating Mondays and Wednesdays each month.
There will always be a supervisor available during your shifts to support you, and we often run extra training to support the work you do on the helpline.
You
We are looking for volunteers who are enthusiastic and interested in supporting other women to improve their mental health and wellbeing. You will be honest, friendly and reliable with good communication skills, as well as a non-judgmental and patient listener.
The helpline role can be challenging and emotionally demanding at times. Therefore, we need women who have adequate life experience and feel emotionally resilient enough to take on the role. We welcome volunteers with personal experience of mental health and other relevant issues, but we require you to have had a one-year period of stability at least before starting the training.
While most of our helpline opening hours are during the daytime, we have two evenings shifts on Mondays and Tuesdays.
How to Apply
Please follow the link below to our website where you will find our general volunteering application form:
https://www.womankindbristol.org.uk/apply-to-become-a-womankind-volunteer/
What Past Helpline Volunteers Say
‘Womankind is doing amazing and essential work for women, and I am incredibly proud to have the opportunity to be involved’.
‘Having completed the helpline training, I have never been in a learning environment in which I felt so supported and received so non-judgementally. It felt like a huge privilege to get to hear such expertise and insights’.