Overview of the role
As a Call Companion volunteer, you’ll regular speak to an older person over the phone, who is experiencing loneliness or isolation. Our training intends to help you get the most out of your role.
Before you start volunteering with us, you’ll need to complete the online training modules on this page and then sign a volunteering agreement.
- To understand the purpose of the service and what to expect from your role.
- To support you in making effective phone calls, such as using active listening skills.
- To explain the challenges you may come across and how to approach them.
- To familiarise yourself with what to do if you have any concerns or worries.
- To feel confident about what is expected in your role.
- To feel equipped to make productive phone calls.
- To feel confident in maintaining the boundaries of the role.
- To know how to report problems or any issues you may have.
Training 1: Introduction
Telephone support is a rewarding and worthwhile service to offer. For a small amount of your free time per week, you can bring a real comfort to an older person who may be lonely, isolated, or sad.
Training 2: Communicating and listening
Taking care to communicate with respect and really listen to the older person can make all the difference to them and have a positive effect on their lives.
Training 3: Building relationships
It is important that the older person feels safe and able to talk to their call companion about their problems or about anything that’s troubling them.
Training 4: Addressing difficulties
You may encounter some challenges in your call companion role. However, it’s important that you recognise you won’t always be able to respond to the older person the way you would in your personal relationships.
Training 5: Reporting issues or concerns
One of the aspects of your role is to make sure that Re-engage knows about any issues or concerns that come up in your regular calls with older people.
Additional resources
Good practice guidelines
As a call companion, it’s important to remember that your role is not to give advice or make decisions for the older person. And you don‘t need to be able to solve all their problems. Understanding the scope of your role and not going beyond this is key.
By maintaining proper boundaries you’re making sure that you and the older person have the same expectations of the service. It also ensures the protection and safety of both parties. Your role is to provide company - you can support the older person to find their own solutions to their problems or signpost them to where they can find specialist help, advice or support.
To see Re-engage boundaries guidelines, please click on the following link:
As a call companion, it’s crucial that you don’t share any personal information about the older person you call with anyone outside Re-engage. And please respect their privacy and make sure you can‘t be overheard during your calls.
At the same time, it’s also important you protect yourself by not sharing your own personal information with them or adding them as a friend on social media.
We also recommend you make your phone number private when making your calls by following these instructions:
- To hide a number from a landline dial 141 and then the number
- From an Android device go to the ‘phone’, press the vertical 3 dots for a drop down menu and select ‘settings’, select ‘supplementary services’, select ‘showing caller ID’, click ‘hide my number’
- From an Apple device go to ‘settings’, select ‘phone’, select ‘show my caller ID’, slide the circle to the left to hide number and back to right (green) to show number.
To see the Re-engage GDPR guidelines, please click on the following link:
Over time, it’s likely you’ll get to know the older person you call very well and they may tell you some very personal details about their life. Please keep this information confidential unless they disclose something you feel worried about, particularly anything that could cause serious harm, either to themselves or others.
In this case you should follow our safeguarding process by completing an incident and concern form and talk to a member of the operational safeguarding team at Re-engage as soon as possible.
To see the Re-engage safeguarding policy, please click the following link: