Advocacy Helpline Volunteer

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Who Cares? Scotland provides an Advocacy Helpline for Care Experienced people of any age, and those who support them. Trained volunteers speak to Care Experienced people (and sometimes social workers or other support workers) on the phone and via email about a range of issues including their time growing up in care and its lifelong impact, our Advocacy provision, financial challenges, housing & homelessness, family relationships, and mental health & wellbeing. The Helpline’s aim is to support Care Experienced people to feel empowered, confident, independent and resilient within their own lives.

This role will involve interacting with people primarily aged over 16 years of age, although the Helpline is open to younger people too. While the work of Helpline Volunteers is supervised and supported on shift, the nature of the work means that volunteers will be engaged in one-to-one conversation, sometimes of an extremely sensitive nature.

• Be first point of contact for all incoming calls and emails to the Advocacy Helpline, working within Who Cares Scotland’s policies and procedures
• Provide a listening space; utilising the skills learned during your training to offer consistent and meaningful connections to Care Experienced people, in a supportive, calm and professional manner
• Refer appropriate callers, or those with complex issues, on to Who Cares? Scotland regional Advocacy staff and Helpline supervising staff
• Offer clear and accurate information to enable callers to make informed decisions with their issues
• Directly support callers with resolving their issue where appropriate, under the guidance of Helpline supervising staff
• Assess whether a caller may be at risk and if so alert a staff supervisor for fuller assessment
• Record information on our database in line with our data protection policy.

• A knowledge of issues affecting Care Experienced children, young people and adults (including statutory services and welfare benefits)
• Good listening skills and communications skills (both verbal and written)
• Confidence with using the telephone and a computer

• Strong personal resilience
• A non-judgemental approach to people, have empathy
• Be enthusiastic, flexible, and committed
• Reliable and approachable
• Friendly, a warm tone, helpful, and understanding
• A commitment to treat all information in a confidential manner
• To have a good value base, be open minded and level-headed
• Ability to reflect on own work and take feedback, in order to develop skills
• Ability to work as part of a team