Recognising the invaluable contribution of our volunteer counsellors
4 June 2020
It’s Volunteers Week 2020 and we wanted to take a few moments to recognise the incredible contribution made by our volunteer counsellors.
Since CrossReach Counselling began over 30 years ago, volunteer counsellors have dedicated their time to meet with clients through all our Counselling Services - Glasgow, Edinburgh, Moray and Inverness and in our community hubs in various locations. We last recorded a total of just over 250 volunteer counsellors (January 2020).
The change of circumstance in March 2020 was very unexpected. All nine of our Counselling Services had to close their office doors and find a way of moving to an online/remote platform, previously not undertaken by any of our services.
Over 100 volunteer counsellors signed up to continue to work remotely with their existing clients, and potentially new clients going forward. This was no small task.
Each one was set up with appropriate apps on their own electronic devices. Following this training was undertaken to allow them to work remotely and safely with existing clients. This included reading and understanding extensive written material on new ‘Distance Therapy’ procedures.
The volunteers have also gone through training on how to access their new CrossReach email accounts and secure note taking and record keeping facility and how to use the CrossReach video consultation room for clients on the NHS Attend Anywhere platform.
We cannot thank our volunteers enough for their huge commitment and dedication to this work. The achievement of change in a relatively short period of time has been remarkable. As one of the Volunteer Counsellors said during their training:
“There’s something very special about CrossReach, and I’m proud to be part of it.”
