What to expect
A befriending service takes you through five stages: an enquiry, an assessment, a wait while a volunteer is found, a first meeting with the coordinator present, and a review a few weeks later.
Anyone who has found a befriending or mentoring service and is about to make the first phone call, and the relative sitting beside them.
The decision to carry on. People drop out during the wait, usually because nobody told them a wait was coming or what it was for.
The assessment visit surprises people. They expect a friendly chat and get questions about their health, their household and who to call in an emergency, and they conclude they are being assessed for care they did not ask for. They are not. Those questions are how a scheme matches safely.
Befriending itself means regular company from a volunteer, given for its own sake, normally an hour a week or an hour a fortnight in person or a weekly call of 20 to 45 minutes. From a charity it is free to the person supported. This page describes the process that almost all schemes follow; it does not describe or recommend any particular service.
The first contact, and what you will be asked
The first contact is a phone call or an online form, and it is short. Expect to be asked who the service is for, their age and postcode, whether they live alone, what sort of company they want, and who is making the enquiry. Two answers decide whether it goes further: the postcode, because catchments are strict, and the eligibility, because a scheme funded for people over 65 in one borough cannot take a 40 year old from the next. Ask here whether there is a charge, and expect a charity to say no.
The assessment, and why it feels like more than it is
The assessment is usually a home visit by the coordinator, and its purpose is matching rather than gatekeeping. The coordinator asks about interests, routine and what a good visit would look like, and also about mobility, hearing, memory, pets, stairs, anyone else in the house and who to contact in an emergency. Those questions are not intrusive by accident. A scheme sending a volunteer into a private home alone has a duty of care to both people, and it discharges that duty here or not at all.
Say what you actually want at this stage. Someone who wants driving to a garden centre and someone who wants company at the kitchen table need different volunteers, and the coordinator can only match on what they were told. Say too if you would prefer a man or a woman, a particular language, or a befriender closer to your own age. Those preferences are normal and schemes expect them.
Waiting, the match and the first meeting
The wait exists because the volunteer does not yet exist. Recruiting one takes 6 to 12 weeks from application to first meeting, most of it references, training and criminal record checking through the Disclosure and Barring Service in England and Wales, PVG scheme membership in Scotland, or AccessNI in Northern Ireland. A full time coordinator holds 30 to 50 active matches at once, fewer where referrals are complex, so a good scheme will tell you honestly that it does not know how long, rather than invent a date.
The first meeting is introduced. A coordinator brings the volunteer, stays for the visit or part of it, and leaves both people free to say afterwards that it is not right. Nothing is settled at that meeting. The pair agree a day and a time, what they will do, and what is out of bounds, and the scheme writes it down. Either person may decline the match without giving a reason, and a scheme that treats a decline as ingratitude is telling you what it is like to complain to later.
How long it lasts, and what it costs
Befriending matches commonly run 6 to 12 months, and matches with older people are frequently open ended, continuing for years until circumstances change. Youth mentoring is different and stricter: the ask is 12 months, because matches ending before three months are associated with outcomes worse than no match at all (Grossman and Rhodes, 2002). If a scheme offers a young person six weeks, treat the short offer itself as the problem.
Befriending from a charity costs the person supported nothing. The volunteer is not paid, and travel is reimbursed by the scheme rather than by you, with car mileage usually paid at the approved rate published by HMRC, which you can check for the current figure. A scheme may ask whether you would like to donate and must take no for an answer. Paid companionship from a care agency is a different arrangement that charges by the hour, so check which you are being offered. Running a match costs the scheme £700 to £2,500 a year, depending on how complex referrals are and whether the coordinator is full time, with 60% to 80% going on coordination.
How to say it is not working
Say it to the coordinator rather than to the befriender, and say it early, while the problem is still a small one. Asking for a different volunteer is a normal request that does not end the arrangement: a coordinator would far rather rematch a pair than lose both of them, and no reason has to be given for the request.
The befriender
- Arrives when agreed, and tells the coordinator when they cannot
- Keeps to what was agreed, and takes any request outside it to the coordinator
- Handles no money, bank cards, keys or medication
- Says to the coordinator, not to you, if they want the match to end
The person supported
- Rings the coordinator, not the befriender, when something is wrong
- Ends the match at any time, for any reason, including no reason
- Asks for a different volunteer without having to justify it
- Expects the scheme to review the match early on, and asks for a review if none comes
The scheme owns the match and its ending. It supervises the volunteer, reviews the match, rematches or closes it, and gives a proper goodbye visit rather than letting the visits fade out. It keeps records of the match under its own written retention policy, commonly six years after closure, because UK GDPR sets no fixed period and requires the scheme to decide one and justify it.
Money, keys or a favour outside the agreement
Ring the coordinator the same day if a befriender asks to borrow money, offers to look after bank cards, asks for a key or suggests keeping something between the two of you. None of that is within any befriending match, however kindly it is meant, and the scheme has a safeguarding procedure for exactly this. Reporting it is not an accusation and does not end the friendship by itself; it puts a second adult in the room, which is the point of using a scheme rather than an advert.