Marmalade Connections – telephone based volunteer

Marmalade Connections supports those in our community who are the most socially isolated, and who experience chronic loneliness.
It’s a time-limited, one-to-one telephone project. Based on the enabling/empowering social prescribing model, trained volunteers make weekly calls to project members for up to 15 weeks, focusing on their specific needs and interests.
These conversations lead to volunteers signposting the project members to local social activities and community support, to improve their social connections long term. For some project members, encouraging connection will take time, but a small step towards improvement is still a positive change! New connections could be made in person, such as at activity groups or clubs, or made online if the project member is able to access the internet independently.

Role outline
As a Marmalade Connections Volunteer, you will support one or occasionally two of our project members (the people we support) for a period of up to 15 weeks. The role involves phoning a matched project member once a week for a friendly call lasting about 30 minutes plus researching potential social connections and activity opportunities to signpost the project member to. You will receive training on how to build up a trusted telephone relationship with your project member(s) to enable you to support and signpost them to relevant services and activities. The aim of this project is to help reduce social isolation and loneliness and to support your project member(s) to discover lasting connections in their community.

Our project members
Our Marmalade project members vary in age and ability, but all experience social isolation and/or loneliness. Many have health problems / mental health challenges or limited mobility, impacting on their ability to go outside. They will also have very different interests and needs in terms of the social connections and types of activities they would like to be involved in to help them feel less lonely.