Telephone and online befriending
Telephone befriending is befriending delivered by regular phone call: the same volunteer rings the same person at an agreed time, usually once a week, for 20 to 45 minutes, with no purpose beyond the conversation itself.
Someone considering a telephone befriending service for themselves or for a relative, and anyone wondering whether a call can really do what a visit does.
Reach. A telephone match works where a visit cannot: rural addresses, a person who is housebound, night time loneliness, a carer who cannot leave the house.
Families set up a call expecting it to solve everything, and then judge it a failure when the person is still isolated. A weekly call can reduce how lonely someone feels, and the evidence for that is real but modest. It does not change how many people are in their life, which is a different measure.
National charities run telephone befriending in the UK, both centrally and through local branches operating their own call services, and the model is also used by independent local charities, health funded schemes and community groups. From a charity the service is free to the person supported, and where the volunteer rings out, the call costs the person nothing.
This site describes how telephone befriending works. It does not list, rate or recommend individual services and it cannot arrange a call for you.
What a weekly call is actually like
A weekly call runs to a rhythm rather than a script. The scheme agrees a day and a time, the volunteer rings, and the conversation is ordinary: the weather, the garden, the football, a programme you both watched. Both sides find the first few calls stilted, and this is normal rather than a sign of a bad match. Most pairs then settle on something that belongs to the two of them, and after that the call has its own subject.
Four features separate a call that lasts from one that quietly stops. The time is fixed, so it becomes part of the week rather than an interruption. The same volunteer rings every time, because the relationship, not the phone call, is the service. The call ends when it was going to end. And a coordinator sits behind it, checking the match is still right.
What a call can carry, and what it cannot
A call carries less than a visit and reaches further, and being honest about both halves is how a family sets expectations they can live with.
| What telephone befriending does well | What it cannot do |
|---|---|
| Reaches people who are housebound or rural | Notice a fall, a cold house or an empty fridge |
| Gives a fixed point in an empty week | Take anyone out of the house |
| Works for someone anxious about a stranger visiting | Work well where hearing loss is significant |
| Starts sooner, since no travel radius is needed | Replace care, treatment or practical help |
The evidence sits in the same place. Befriending shows modest benefit on loneliness measures, and weaker, less consistent results for depression and for use of health services. A scheme can reduce loneliness, meaning how a person feels, without reducing isolation, meaning how many contacts they actually have. Around 6% of adults in Great Britain report feeling lonely often or always, according to the Office for National Statistics, and a weekly call is aimed squarely at that feeling rather than at the size of someone’s address book.
Online and video befriending, and who it suits
Online befriending is the same model over a video call or a messaging app, and it suits a narrower group than the telephone does. It works for people already comfortable with a tablet or smartphone, for younger disabled adults, and for people who find conversation easier with a face to read. It does not work as a default for older people, because it adds a device, a connection and a password to a service whose whole appeal is that it is simple. A scheme offering video will normally offer the phone as well, and asking for the phone is not a failure.
Who pays for it, and why free is not free
Befriending from a charity is normally free to the person supported and that includes telephone befriending, whichever organisation runs it, and a service that does charge should say so in writing before the first call. Behind that, light touch telephone befriending costs a scheme £700 to £1,200 per match per year, the bottom of the wider range of £700 to £2,500 across all befriending and mentoring. Where a scheme sits inside that band depends on how complex its referrals are, whether the coordinator is full time and how long matches are expected to run. Between 60% and 80% of the cost is coordination rather than the calling, which is the honest reason a good scheme cannot start you tomorrow.
The volunteer caller
- Rings at the agreed time, every week, and tells the coordinator in advance when they cannot
- Withholds their own number if the scheme’s policy is that calls come from a scheme line
- Keeps to conversation, and passes anything worrying to the coordinator the same day
- Gives no advice on money, medication or benefits, however reasonable the request sounds
The person called
- Says when the agreed time stops working, because a call at a bad hour becomes a burden
- Says what they want to talk about, and says when they would rather not talk at all
- Ends the arrangement at any point, without giving a reason
- Tells the coordinator, not the volunteer, if something about the calls feels wrong
The scheme matches the pair, supervises the volunteer, and holds a written policy for what happens when a call is not answered. It also decides and writes down how long it keeps call logs, commonly six years after the match closes, because UK GDPR fixes no retention period and requires the scheme to set one, justify it and apply it.
The call is not answered
The volunteer does not keep ringing and does not go to the address. They tell the coordinator, who follows the scheme’s written no reply procedure: ring again later, contact the emergency contact named at assessment, and escalate to the GP, adult social care or the emergency services where there is reason to think someone is at risk. Every telephone scheme needs this written down before its first call, because it is the one thing a call service is structurally poor at noticing.