Would you be willing to volunteer for The Compassionate Friends (TCF)?

Are you comfortable using Facebook and the internet, and feel you could support bereaved parents or adult siblings who are members of our private Facebook Groups or Forum by helping to provide a safe place to share their grief and find connection, friendship, comfort, understanding and hope?

If yes, we would encourage you to consider our Facebook Group or Forum Moderator role. In this role, you would be part of a team of moderators caring for Group members both current and new. This will include: welcoming new members, acknowledging and validating experiences being shared and responding as appropriate to posts with kindness, support and hope. You may use your own experience to offer perspective and reassurance, suggest themes and topics that might be helpful at difficult times of the year or when the Group is quiet, as well as posting links, articles, quotes and relevant TCF news and events that might be helpful and of interest to Group members.

Along with other members of the moderating team, you will act as a calming, balanced influence if posts come across as antagonistic or disrespectful in any way.

Together you will monitor activity on the Group or Forum to ensure respectful, appropriate use including working together as a moderating team or with the TCF staff team to decide the most appropriate action to take in specific circumstances.

It is important that you are feeling more resilient around your own loss and able to read and respond empathically to a diverse range of parents or adult siblings sharing both similar and different stories of loss and grief.

You will also need to be comfortable both working cooperatively in a team and supporting independently.

We currently require additional moderators for all our Facebook groups, in particular Adult Bereaved Sibling, General Loss of a Child, Bereaved Dads, Parents Bereaved of an Only Child or All Children, Loss of a School Age-Child, Loss to Cancer or Long Term Illness.  You can find details here https://www.tcf.org.uk/online-support-facebook/

We are also currently seeking additional moderators for our TCF Forum.

Would you like to offer one to one phone/email or in person support to other grandparents who have also sadly lost a granddaughter or grandson?

We would like to create a small team of volunteers who would be available to offer support to bereaved grandparents who contact our Helpline. Your support would comprise either a regular phone or email perhaps once a week or at intervals agreed between you and the grandparent you are supporting. If you live close to the grandparent you are supporting, you may wish to offer to meet for a regular coffee or walk. Some grandparents you support may only need short term support, others for a longer period of time. Their circumstances of loss may be similar or different to your own.

Would you be willing to reach out to support more newly bereaved parents providing informal 1 to 1 support and friendship to them in the early months following the death of their child? 

If yes, we would encourage you to consider our grief companion role. A grief companion may be offered to a parent from 3 months after their loss and generally within the first two years. Your support may continue for a period of up to 12 months. As a guide, we would expect contact to be provided once a week for about an hour. You will generally be matched with a parent based on the age at which you lost your child and the cause of death, although other factors may be taken into account. Grief companions mainly support one parent at a time, although occasionally volunteers may be willing to take on the support of two parents.

This can be an important way for parents to access peer support, particularly where there are no TCF local support contacts or support groups in their area. Please be aware that the bereaved parent you are asked to support may be from any part of the UK, rather than someone who is local to you. The contact will usually be by phone and email. As a grief companion, you will be using your own experience and ways of coping to be alongside another bereaved parent and building an ongoing and supportive relationship.

Are you comfortable in a group environment and with the idea of leading or co-facilitating a support group for either bereaved parents or adult bereaved siblings.

If yes, we would encourage you to consider the role of a support group facilitator or co-facilitator. We have a range of group facilitator options available as follows:

• setting up and running a local support group in your area (bereaved parents only)
• co-facilitating at an existing TCF support group in your area
• joining an existing team of volunteer facilitators offering on-line facilitation at our online sharing sessions for loss in specific circumstances
• supporting as a co-facilitator at in-person discussion groups held at our supportive weekends and day events throughout the UK

Support Group Facilitators create a welcoming, safe, supportive and inclusive environment which encourages group members to share their grief and experiences. A support group facilitator will provide a consistent group framework enabling group members to share, connect, find coping strategies, build resilience and re-engage more fully in life.

A Support Group Facilitator will do more listening than talking. It is important that you are feeling more resilient around your own loss and able to listen to and empathise with a diverse range of parents or adult siblings sharing both similar and different stories of loss and grief. Resilience is also needed to manage occasional group challenges and dynamics and to feel sufficiently robust in not taking these challenges personally. We ask that you work closely with any co-facilitator or facilitators to work in the best interests of peer support and enable consistency of approach creating the safeness that is needed for group members to share openly.

We require all volunteers offering group support to attend our online group facilitation training and information day which provides the framework that TCF advocates for all of our support group environments. Our training takes place on Zoom. Upcoming training dates for 2025 are as follows:

• Friday 6 June 9-4.30pm
• Monday 13 October 9-4.30pm 

Would you like to offer support to bereaved parents in your area? Parents will be referred to you by our national helpline.

If yes, we would encourage you to consider our local support contact volunteer role. In this role, you would offer phone support and/or meeting for a coffee or a walk with a parent or parents in your local area. You may support some parents with just one phone call or meet-up for coffee, whilst others might need ongoing support for a few months or longer. If you are supporting a number of parents, you may wish to arrange occasional informal group meet-ups to encourage mutual connection and support. If there is a support group nearby, you may also work with your local TCF group facilitator to encourage parents to attend local group meetings in addition to your 1 to 1 support.

It is important that you are feeling more resilient around your own loss and grief and comfortable with listening to and hearing others’ stories of loss, many of which will be to circumstances that are very different to your own or where parents grieve and cope differently to you. You will need to be flexible with your time given it is difficult to predict when helpline referrals might come through and what support individual parents will require.

Do you consider yourself an empathic, compassionate listener who is comfortable speaking with and supporting a wide range of bereaved individuals by phone and email?

If yes, we would encourage you to consider our national helpline volunteer role. In this role, you will often be the first point of contact for bereaved individuals contacting our peer support charity. We receive calls from bereaved parents, adult siblings and grandparents who have either very recently lost their child, sibling or grandchild or may be a few months or many years bereaved. We also receive calls from a range of professionals and family members enquiring about support for bereaved individuals or family members they are supporting. Calls are also received from individuals who have not lost a child, sibling or grandchild but are drawn to our charity name in the hope of some compassionate support. Some callers contact our service only once whilst others may seek regular phone support.

You will join our remote team of volunteers who are closely supported by our Helpline Manager and Helpline Coordinator who also take calls. Our helpline is open every day of the year and as often as possible between the hours of 10am – 4pm and 7pm – 10pm. We ask that you commit to at least 3 helpline sessions per month. You may wish to offer your time during the day, evening or over a weekend. Each session is 3 hours long with additional time required for admin follow-up including completing online call record forms, composing emails and letter replies to some callers. You may need a landline and a quiet, confidential space in which to take calls. You will also connect callers, as appropriate, to a range of other support avenues within and outside of TCF. At times, you will be requested to phone callers during your session and particularly those who have left messages on our answering machine. Our calls are not recorded or listened to.

For this role, it is essential that you feel resilient around your own loss and grief and comfortable with, and sufficiently robust in, listening to and hearing others’ stories of loss particularly as many callers are in very early, raw, grief. Their loss may be to circumstances that are very different to your own or where individuals grieve and cope differently to you.

This is very much a listening role in acknowledging and validating callers’ individual experiences. It is not about advice giving or expressing your own strongly held views or beliefs. We share our experience only where this is helpful to the caller.

Would you like to support adult bereaved siblings who have also sadly lost a brother or sister of any age?

If yes, you can offer your support either online or in person. For further information about the volunteer roles we have available, please see the appropriate sections of this page

• Facebook Moderator
• Online Group Facilitator/Co-Facilitator

Have you lost a child or children with disabilities/additional needs? Would you like to offer 1 to 1 support by phone or email to other parents? Parents will be referred to you by our national helpline. Those you support may be located anywhere in the UK.

If yes, we would encourage you to consider this specific support role. Our hope is to build a team of volunteers who between them can offer this much needed support to parents. In this role, you would offer phone and/or email support to parents who would like to speak with someone who understands and appreciates how it feels to lose a child or children with disabilities/additional needs.

You may support some parents with just one phone call or email, whilst others might need ongoing phone or email support for a few months or longer.

Do you enjoy walking and would feel comfortable planning and leading walks to provide opportunities for bereaved parents, adult siblings and grandparents to walk and talk together in nature?

If yes, we would encourage you to consider our walk facilitator role. In this role you will plan and lead walks either in your local area or another area of your choice that would be suitable for walkers of all levels. This could be in a local park, wooded area, river walk, National Trust grounds or area of outstanding natural beauty. Most walks also involve an informal chat at the start or end of the walk at a local café.

The emphasis is very much on walking and talking together in nature and not about offering challenging walks or the distance walked. This may be a regular or occasional walk that can be between 1 and 5 hours’ duration. Group size may vary with each walk. If the group is big, it can help to ask if someone is willing to act as a backmarker.

This can be such an important way for bereaved parents, siblings and grandparents to access peer support and particularly where there are no other local TCF contacts or groups in the area. There is no requirement to offer additional support in between planned walks.

As a walk facilitator, you will be using your own experience and ways of coping to be alongside others. A good level of personal fitness would be helpful. TCF will assist you with the administrative aspects of publicising your walks and putting you in touch with anyone wishing to attend.