Do you have - ‘joy, patience, commitment, understanding, a fun-loving nature and are happy to have a laugh and a joke’? (as requested by our members).
Paul’s Place is a charity that enhances life for physically disabled adults with cognitive or sensory impairment.
We do this by providing social activities that connect people, reduce isolation, improve health and wellbeing and give people the opportunity to develop new skills, enjoy new experiences and live life to the full.
Due to the impact of the Covid19 situation, we have had to move our support for members to a virtual one. We are working towards reopening our day-care centre as soon as restrictions allow whilst also planning to broaden our telephone support to members. This is a new and evolving project and we are looking for volunteers to take on the role of telephone befriender during this time.
We are also running a series of zoom activity sessions for our members which range from cookery, art classes, film groups and games. We are looking for volunteers with ideas and skills to help to continue to set up and run our zoom sessions.
The volunteer role will involve:
- calling a Paul’s Place member for a chat on a weekly/fortnightly basis.
- listening and talking to them to see how they are. To encourage their interests and hobbies by chatting about them.
- keeping a record of each phone call and reporting back to the volunteer coordinator
- attending supervision as required.
- attending an induction and any essential training (including mandatory Safeguarding training).
To be a befriender you will need to:
- to have an understanding of the issues that can affect the disabled community.
- to be a good listener with a friendly and approachable personality and a warm telephone manner.
- be keen to find out about their interests and hobbies and discuss them.
- to have a caring nature; be patient; respectful and have good empathy skills.
- to have access to a telephone that you are willing to use for the calls.
- to be able to keep a log of calls.
- able to give at least 1 hour of your time a week.
- a commitment to volunteering with us for at least 3/6 months.
- able to provide 2 references.
By becoming a Paul’s Place telephone befriender, you would make a real difference to someone’s life, supporting them to have more interaction with people in the community at a time when it is difficult to interact face to face.
We provide all necessary training and we support you throughout your volunteering.
Please note, for all of our volunteer roles a DBS check will be carried out and references will be taken up.
Please contact our volunteer coordinator for more information - jeasty@paulsplace.org.uk