Volunteer With Anxiety Care

Anxiety Care is a Redbridge based charity that works with people who have severe anxiety problems and disorders. Around one in thirteen people have an anxiety disorder. Most commonly, these are Agoraphobia, Social Phobia, General Anxiety Disorder and Obsessive/compulsive Disorder. These syndromes may overlap with each other and with depression.

Anxiety Care works with clients to help them to overcome anxiety problems. Help often involves supporting clients as they undertake an exposure programme. This means devising a series of steps that involves gradually increasing exposure to the feared situation. However, this might not be the first type of help a client needs, as many people suffer from allied problems and lack of confidence that requires a good deal of initial work. This work is offered within the Groups, Confidence Building and Assertiveness Classes, Structured Recovery Visits, the Telephone Helpline, and the Internet via groups and email support. We also offer One to One counselling with trained Anxiety Care volunteers who also have a counselling qualification in their own right.

After training most volunteers will become part of the Structured Recovery Visit service and/or the Groups. The Structured Recovery Visit service entails two volunteers visiting clients in their home, and offering whatever support is deemed advisable; probably over a number of weeks or months. Every six weeks volunteers meet to discuss their Structured Recovery Visit clients' progress. Similar meetings to review the Groups are held regularly, and volunteers can become involved in leading and facilitating these Groups.

Some volunteers may prefer to work on the Telephone Helpline or the Internet, and further training is available for this.

To do this work adequately, Anxiety Care trains volunteers in 'Listening Skills' (Module 1) and 'Structured Recovery Work' (Module 2) over two six-week training modules. These take place on Tuesdays at the Cardinal Heenan Centre from 10.00am to 3.00pm. There is a fee for both modules, payable at the beginning of each, and details are available from the office.

As part of the training, volunteers are required to attend one or more of the groups, which take place Monday and Tuesday evenings in Ilford, and accompany a senior volunteer on Structured Recovery Visits in client's homes, for a total of 10 hours over the second period of training. After training, every volunteer will be expected to attend regular group supervision sessions for their continuing professional development, and additional courses may be offered from time to time.

Once training has been successfully completed, and Anxiety Care's requirements are met, those volunteers who require a counselling placement will be provided with access to face to face clients. Those on counselling placement are also required to commit to a minimum of one service during the placement period.