Volunteers are amazing, whilst we cannot go into too many details in this case study, I would like to highlight what a difference our volunteers make.
Our volunteers between them talk to on average 150 people a week, these are purely friendship calls but sometimes things come up in conversation that are ‘not quite right’. We have things in place to ensure if there is something that does transpire following the call that the volunteer knows exactly what to do. Our volunteers know not to investigate or try to “fix” anything but know if their senses are telling them something is amiss what they need to do.
We had a call from a volunteer saying she was worried about a recipient as he wasn’t answering which was unusual, she kept trying and this went on for a few weeks. As this was highly unusual we put things in place to try and contact him by other means. Eventually the volunteer managed to speak to Tyler who informed her there had been an incident that had left him isolated in his accommodation, unable to leave the house and very frightened, he wasn’t answering the phone or door, his mental health was on the decline.
Our volunteer reported this straight in and highlighted her concerns. We contacted the appropriate channels and the outcome was that he got support from social services to start and sort the situation. I hate to think what might have happened if we hadn’t been involved.