What you do is try to establish a healthy relationship, and one that will be the vehicle for postive health outcomes. You will feed back to us how you think it is going and we will give you guidance on what’s ok and what’s not. This document more of a list of these things to get you of to a good start. Obviously its not exhaustive but we have all the time in the world to let you explore more questions through support and supervision sessions, coaching and reflective practice.

The type of people who volunteer for us come from many different backgrounds and have widely ranging life experiences. We are looking for people who are interested and curious in other peoples lives and people that can converse in a way that is not damaging to the other person. This sounds easy, but we know that its not always that simple. This document gives you an understanding of the qualities that we look for in our volunteers and we will help you to understand the reasons why, or to work towards keeping these in focus whilst volunteering for us.

“Pushing the boundaries” We here this a lot in our line of work. More often than not it is used when someone doesn’t know what the boundaries are in the first place. We will guide you through how to keep within the boundaries of the role and how to explain these to the person you are working with fro the start. That is the purpose of having these documents accessible to you at all times. We have staff with decades of experience of making mistakes and you can pop in now an learn from them all. Starting with this summary here.

This is an organisational policy that covers how we all conduct ourselves. We aim to do more talking than reading around this subject and its impossible to capture every situation that might occur. But we have to start somewhere. While we are representing the organisation it is important that we all have a framework to work from. When it comes to conduct, this is the document that we will refer to. It covers confidentiality, professionalism, seeking advice and things like accepting and giving gifts.

When we are introduced to the people we work with, we are often given information that refers to the “risk” around that person. It is everyones responsibility to think about health and safety so we introduce this document to you now. However, I ask you to think about what your risk assessment would contain if someone listed all the things you have done whilst intoxicated or when you were at your worst. Then imagine that everyone you met was given a copy of this first and how that would affect the relationship and how you would communicate. This is an introduction to the power imbalance that exists in this relationship. It is also our response to overseeing the health and safety of all the people who work with us and receive our services.

Risk assessment – Outings
Risk assessment – Check in Check out
Risk Assessment – Lone working

The referral is the form we receive of the health proffessional or the third sector worker who thinks that the person would benefit from our service. Referring back to Adam Burleys video it is important to think about the language used here and how we interpret this. It is our first job to read this, ideally have a conversation with the referrer to open up the conversation further and go and then go and meet the person and start our own conversation. We are not medical proffessionals, social workers, counsellors or therapists or carers. This one one hand makes it harder to explain what we do it also means we can enjoy a more curious and flexible approach to our conversation. Connect on a human level first.

The Protection of Vulnerable Groups Scheme helps us make sure that we have the right people working and volunteering with us. If you have passed the induction stage and have been asked to send us a PVG form then the link here will take you to volunteer scotland page where you can read up and download the correct form.

If you are not already a member of the PVG scheme:
Click here to Join the PVG Scheme as a new member
If you are already a member of the PVG Scheme:
Click here to join as an existing member

Please read our Check in / Check out procedure for CARDS volunteer’s visits

Check in / Check out document

Please read our Case Notes procedure for CARDS volunteer’s visits

We require volunteers to keep accurate records of their visits in order to provide the best possible service to the client and volunteer and as a method of ensuring good practice and team communication.