• Our Befrienders

Our Befrienders

"The befriending conversations are filled with laughter, cheeky banter, and trust."

One of our volunteers

michelle at chesterfield community food hut

Our Inclusion & Engagement team has been busy during the lockdown, working from home to support vulnerable service users.

Food parcels

Michelle Drain took delivery of a kind donation from Chesterfield Community Food Hut, and made up food parcels before delivering them to service users and staff. The night before she also blew up some balloons to decorate the parcels, but unfortunately they had all deflated by the following morning.

Befriending calls

As well as calling the families of service users at least once a week, the team and an army of volunteers has also been making over a hundred wellbeing calls a week to vulnerable adults.

Victoria Vale has been overseeing the scheme, and has seen some lovely stories emerge. These include Daniel who has rarely been out since the lockdown started, but after an encouraging chat with his befriender went out for a walk to his local bridge. He is now doing it every day. Helen has been doing loads of drawings that are then posted on Facebook. Two of her friends have seen them and asked if she will do drawings for them.

One of the volunteers summed up the befriending scheme beautifully: “When I read the logs I see the stories of friendships slowly building, the different personalities and senses of humour gradually creeping in. Some have taken longer than others, but they are all positive conversations filled with laughter, cheeky banter, and trust. I feel blessed to have been given the opportunity to get to know these lovely people, to hear their life stories, and to share in their interests and worries.”