Volunteering as a mentor or befriender
Mentoring and befriending schemes in the UK recruit five recognisable types of volunteer: the youth mentor matched with a referred child, the adult or peer mentor working alongside someone who shares an experience they have already had, the face-to-face befriender who visits an isolated person at home, the telephone befriender who makes a weekly call, and the workplace mentor inside a business, who is usually doing it as part of a job rather than as volunteering at all.
Anyone in the UK weighing up volunteering as a mentor or a befriender. It is written for you, not for the scheme recruiting you.
The person you would be matched with. Agreeing to a year without understanding the year is the commonest cause of an early ending, and an early ending lands on them.
People say yes to the feeling, then meet the references, the checks and the twelve months. They leave politely at week ten, and a referred child learns again that adults do not stay.
The first four are the ones a scheme trains, checks and supervises.
The five types of volunteer, and which one you are being asked to be
Each type carries a different dose and a different length, and the difference is not a matter of taste. Dose and duration decide whether a one-to-one relationship helps or harms, so read the row matching the opportunity in front of you.
| Type of volunteer | Matched with | Usual dose | Usual length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Youth mentor | A referred young person | About an hour a week | 12 months |
| Adult or peer mentor | An adult with a shared experience | About an hour a week | 6 to 12 months |
| Face-to-face befriender | An older or isolated person, at home | An hour a week or a fortnight | 6 to 12 months, often open-ended |
| Telephone befriender | Someone who cannot easily be visited | 20 to 45 minutes, weekly | 6 to 12 months, often open-ended |
| Workplace mentor | A colleague, inside the same business | Set by the employer | Set by the employer |
Schemes advertise for volunteers in the plural, but the person supported meets one volunteer, singular, and that is the whole model. A role described as covering a rota is a visiting service, which is a reasonable thing to run and is not mentoring or befriending.
Is mentoring volunteering, or is it something else
Mentoring in a community, school or charity scheme is volunteering: yes, unambiguously. You are unpaid, not an employee, and can stop. Workplace mentoring sits outside that, being part of a paid role, and mentoring advertised with a salary is a job whatever the advert calls it.
Unpaid does not mean cost-free. One active match costs a scheme roughly £700 to £2,500 a year, and 60% to 80% of that is coordination rather than the volunteering: recruitment, checks, training, matching, supervision and closing the match properly. Where a scheme sits in that band depends on how complex its referrals are, whether the coordinator is full-time and how far volunteers travel. You are not free labour, you are a delivery model with an overhead, and the overhead is what keeps both of you safe.
What volunteering as a mentor or befriender actually asks
The ask is small per week and large per year, and volunteers underestimate the second half of that sentence.
Youth mentoring asks for twelve months because of what short matches do. Matches ending before three months are associated with outcomes worse than no match at all, published by Grossman and Rhodes in 2002. A child who is referred, told a named adult will turn up, then dropped after eight weeks has had an experience, and it is not a neutral one. Befriending is less rigid: six to twelve months is common, often open-ended with older people.
Add the parts nobody advertises. Getting in takes six to twelve weeks. You log each session, attend supervision, and keep a criminal record check current: a DBS check in England and Wales, PVG scheme membership in Scotland, or an AccessNI check in Northern Ireland. A scheme that asks you to start before those are back has skipped them for somebody else too.
What you get back, stated honestly
What you get back is real and smaller than the recruitment leaflet says. Youth mentoring shows an overall effect of around 0.2 of a standard deviation in meta-analysis, reported by DuBois and colleagues in 2011: small but real. Your own return is of the same order. You gain practice at listening without steering, a clearer view of a part of your area you had no reason to see, and the satisfaction of having been reliable to one person for a year.
What you do not get is a transformation, or gratitude on a schedule. A befriending scheme can reduce how lonely someone feels without changing how many contacts they have, because loneliness and isolation are different measures. Around 6% of adults in Great Britain report feeling lonely often or always, according to the Office for National Statistics, and the evidence shows modest benefit on loneliness and weaker results elsewhere.
The mentor or befriender
- Turns up on the agreed day, and gives notice when they cannot.
- Keeps to the length agreed at matching.
- Reports a safeguarding concern the same day, without investigating first.
- Claims expenses, so the role stays open to volunteers who cannot absorb the cost.
The young person or person visited
- Is told at the first meeting how long the match should last.
- Can say no to an activity without the match being withdrawn.
- Is told, in words they understand, what the volunteer cannot keep secret.
- Gets a planned ending, not a volunteer who stops replying.
The scheme owes both of them the same things: a named contact who answers, supervision that happens whether or not anything has gone wrong, insurance covering what the volunteer is actually asked to do, expenses paid without argument, and a closing conversation planned from the start.
How to tell a well-run scheme from a badly-run one before you commit
You can tell a well-run scheme from a badly-run one in a single conversation, and it is worth having before you commit a year. Programme practice, not volunteer quality, moves outcomes: matching, training, supervision and match length. A well-run scheme beats a badly-run one by more than mentoring beats no mentoring. Ask six questions and listen for hesitation.
- Ask how long the match should last, and where that is written down.
- Ask how many active matches the coordinator holds; one full-time coordinator holds roughly 30 to 50, fewer where referrals are complex.
- Ask who you ring on a Saturday, by name.
- Ask what induction covers, and confirm it happens before your first meeting.
- Ask how expenses are claimed and how quickly they are paid.
- Ask how matches end, and what happens when a volunteer stops early.
A scheme offers you a six-week mentoring block with a referred child
Decline it, and say why. A mentoring scheme that cannot ask for a year should not be recruiting volunteers to work with children, because the short match is the version that does harm.