The Role of a Helpline Volunteer
Get Connected finds young people help. We have to be much more than just a gateway for information; we need to be a supportive friend to thousands of young people across the UK. Our service is completely confidential, non-judgmental and critically, it is totally free - including the connection to other services from us.
The three really important aspects of the Helpline Volunteer role at Get Connected are:
Emotionally supporting the young person
Exploring the options available to the young person
Enabling the young person to access the help they need
Emotionally supporting the young person
As a Helpline Volunteer, first you’ll explore what is going on with the young person, assessing any danger they may be in, gently finding out how they feel about what’s happening and helping them prioritise their situation. There may be several things worrying them, and this process helps them to think about the various ways of dealing with them.
Exploring the options available to the young person
You’ll help the young person decide for themselves what they want to happen next, whether it’s to change their situation straight away, or simply talk to someone about it. Once they’ve decided, you can suggest services from our database that you think may be appropriate, explaining what each of them does and how they might be relevant.
Enabling the young person to access the help they need
Get Connected Helpline Volunteers can give contact information to the young person for their choice of support service by phone, by text to their mobile, or via a web link if they’re talking to a Helpline Volunteer online.
For any young people who are simply too scared to explain their situation again to someone else, who have no phone credit, or don’t want a phone call or text to show up on their bill, we can make a free connection to their choice of service for them.
We use a three-way phone call to do this so that our Helpline Volunteer can make sure that the young person ends up talking to the right member of staff.
To give you a better idea of what our Helpline Volunteers get out of volunteering with us, read some of their stories and find out what they think: Volunteer Stories