FAMILY FRIENDS VOLUNTEERS
Reimbursement of travel expenses
Good volunteers are the backbone of our work and we are pleased that you may wish to join the Family Friends’ team.
Who do Family Friends support?
We support disadvantaged families living in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in London. All families have requested a volunteer and have expressed the desire to make positive changes in their lives.
Our families are 80% ethnic and minority group. We support several families where English is limited. We do not have interpreters, although some of our volunteers are multi-lingual.
There is no typical Family Friends’ family, but 70% are from single parent households and many face such issues as poverty, inadequate housing, poor health, social isolation, refugee/asylum seeker/new immigrant status and depression. Over 40% have a family member with a disability. Children may be affected by school exclusions, behavioural problems and lack of a positive adult role model. Often our families have become isolated from extended family and friends and need support to reconnect or find new resources.
We are working through volunteers, not trained professionals, and so our guidelines state that we are unable to work with families who have severe, long-term mental health issues, children under five on the child protection register, any children who are on the child protection register for sexual or physical abuse in the home, current untreated substance mis-use and on-going domestic violence.
What commitment do we ask from our volunteers?
Volunteers visit their families for two hours a week in the family’s home. We ask for a minimum of one year’s commitment to the programme aiming for 45 visits.
Before being matched to a family, volunteers are all required to attend an interview and complete a 10-hour training course. Satisfactory references and Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks are required.
Once volunteers are introduced to the families, it is their responsibility to contact the office weekly to give feedback and receive supervision. This can be by email, phone or face-to-face. They are also expected to attend the evening support meetings every 3 months where ongoing training is given.
What is the recruitment process?
The recruitment process is as follows:
- Prospective volunteers complete the registration form and send it by post or email to our office.
- Family Friends' staff telephone prospective volunteers to discuss their application and arrange to meet them.
- Volunteer interviews take place at our offices, usually lasting 1 hour.
- Due to the nature of our work, Family Friends is unable to take on volunteers who have convictions (custodial or non-custodial) of less than 15 years. Driving offences may be exempt from this.
- For CRB checking purposes, prospective volunteers must have lived in the UK for the last two years and must not have travelled abroad for over six months in either year.
- We invite successful applicants to attend the next training session. We contact the three people given for references and send off CRB checks.
- Volunteers attend 10 hours of training, either weekend, daytime or evening sessions. There are two forthcoming trainings: 18th and 19th September, weekend and 4th, 11th and 18th October, mornings.
- Once references and CRB checks have been approved, and after discussing a prospective family with the volunteer, an introduction visit will be arranged.
- We meet the volunteer before the introduction visit and accompany them on their first visit to the family.
Email applications to: familyfriendsw10@btconnect.com
What should you bring to the interview?
All volunteers are given an enhanced CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) police check, as part of our legal obligation, as an organisation working in support of children and families. It is very important that you bring some original items of identification to the interview:
- Any two of the following: valid Passport, UK Birth Certificate or full UK Driving License (paper or photocard)
- Plus two current address identifications (e.g. Bank Statement, Gas/Electricity Bill, etc) and your National Insurance number.
- A list of addresses you have lived in over the last five years.
Should you be unable to provide any of these, please let us know, as other items may be acceptable.
How are volunteers trained?
We presently run eight 10-hour courses a year with a maximum of 18 people per course. They take place either on three consecutive Monday nights, on a weekend, or over three weekday mornings. The course is compulsory for all Family Friends’ volunteers. The training has an interactive format, with teaching, discussion, case studies, individual and group feedback. The focus of the course is on ‘active’ listening skills, the role of a befriender and ‘how to empower a family’. We also invite current volunteers to the training to talk about the work they are doing.
All candidates are given a training handbook at the beginning of the first session which contains all the handouts from the course, notes from teaching sections (e.g. on child development and attachment theory) and a reading list. We ask all volunteers to complete evaluation forms after the training.
How are volunteers supported?
It is part of the Volunteers Agreement, that volunteers will contact the staff in the office each week to give feedback and receive guidance on visits. This can be done by email, or a phone conversation, which typically takes 10 minutes but may last 30 minutes to one hour, depending on the situation. Face-to-face supervision may be given as an alternative.
Volunteers are required to attend evening support group meetings every three months, where on-going training is offered by expert speakers on such topics as bullying, depression and parenting, and respecting cultural differences. The support groups last for approximately 90 minutes.
We send volunteers a list of potential activities for befriending (lists of parks and museums in the area etc.), an annual newsletter, and a monthly information newsletter, giving updates on activities, courses and relevant benefits (resources are also passed on to volunteers during the weekly telephone calls).
What sort of people volunteer?
Family Friends welcomes volunteers from all sections of the community. Our volunteers are currently 65–70% ethnic and minority group and they range in age from 25 to 75 years. One family may want an older volunteer with direct parenting experience, while another may want someone young with whom they can relate. We carefully match families and volunteers based on skills, interests and personality rather than ethnic and cultural background, unless specifically requested by a family.