Where mentoring and befriending stop
Mentoring, coaching and counselling are three different contracts, and only the third is clinical: mentoring works towards a goal in the person’s own life using the mentor’s experience, coaching works towards a goal in a defined performance domain using a method, and counselling works with psychological distress under a clinical contract, with a practitioner who should carry indemnity and clinical supervision, though neither title is protected, so registration is checked rather than assumed. Mentoring and befriending also border three practices that carry duties volunteers do not have: advocacy, care and social work.
A volunteer who has found themselves in a conversation they were not trained for, and a coordinator writing the boundary into a role description before that happens.
The person supported, who is entitled to a regulated professional rather than a volunteer improvising, and the volunteer, who is not insured or qualified for the work next door.
A mentor becomes the only person holding a young person’s distress, a befriender ends up managing somebody’s money, and the professional who should have been called never is, because the volunteer was coping.
Where the role ends is a harder question than where it starts, because the crossing is gradual and well intentioned.
The four practices mentoring and befriending border
Four neighbouring practices sit close enough to a one-to-one volunteer role to be walked into by accident, and each answers to somebody different.
| Practice | What it is for | Who holds it to account |
|---|---|---|
| Counselling and psychotherapy | Psychological distress | Professional bodies and their registers, several accredited by the Professional Standards Authority. Practitioner psychologist titles are protected by the Health and Care Professions Council |
| Advocacy | Getting the person’s own view heard | No regulator and no protected title. A commissioned statutory advocate works to their contract and to the commissioning local authority’s specification, and to their own organisation’s complaints route |
| Care | Personal care and daily living | The care regulator in each nation: the Care Quality Commission, the Care Inspectorate in Scotland, Care Inspectorate Wales and the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority |
| Social work | Statutory assessment and risk | Social Work England, Social Care Wales, the Scottish Social Services Council and the Northern Ireland Social Care Council. “Social worker” is a protected title |
| Mentoring and befriending | A named goal, or the relationship itself | No professional regulator. The scheme, through its own policy, its supervision and the safeguarding law that applies |
The last row is why this page exists. Nobody regulates mentoring or befriending, so nothing external stops a volunteer drifting into the rows above.
Counselling: the boundary volunteers cross most
Counselling is the boundary volunteers cross most often, because crossing it feels like kindness rather than error. A mentee starts describing a bereavement, a panic that will not stop, thoughts of not being here. The mentor listens, which is right. Then the mentor begins asking about the past, offering interpretations, or agreeing to be available when the feelings come. That is where it stops being mentoring. The volunteer has not been careless; they are doing therapeutic work with no clinical contract, no indemnity, no clinical supervision and no way to hold the person between sessions.
The test is direction of travel: mentoring and coaching work forwards from where the person is, and counselling works with what the person is carrying. If the hour is going inwards and backwards, the practice has changed. Stay warm, say plainly that this deserves someone properly trained, and have the coordinator route it through the person’s GP, the psychological therapies route for that nation, which in England is the NHS Talking Therapies programme and elsewhere is the equivalent service run by NHS Wales, NHS Scotland or Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland, or the organisation’s own referral route. Neither “counsellor” nor “psychotherapist” is a protected title in the United Kingdom, so a scheme referring on checks registration rather than the word.
Advocacy, care and social work
Advocacy is speaking for the person’s stated wishes, and its discipline is that the advocate never substitutes their own judgement. A volunteer who telephones the housing office “to sort it out” has crossed into advocacy while breaking its central rule, because they said what they think rather than what the person said. Statutory advocacy is a legal entitlement in defined circumstances: in England the Care Act 2014 requires the local authority to arrange an independent advocate where a person would otherwise have substantial difficulty being involved in decisions about their care. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own advocacy duties, and where an entitlement exists, a volunteer standing in for it deprives the person of it.
Care is the clearest boundary and the easiest to cross physically. Helping someone to the toilet, moving them, handling medication and dressing a wound are personal care, done by trained and insured workers for providers registered with the regulator in that nation. A befriender who steadies somebody on the stairs has done something well meant that, if it goes wrong, is an injury the scheme is not covered for. Social work is crossed by paperwork rather than touch: assessing risk, deciding what a family needs, negotiating with statutory services. Those are statutory functions carried out by a protected profession, and a volunteer performing them is unaccountable and invisible to the system that should be recording the risk.
A volunteer is asked to keep something secret
The volunteer does not agree, before hearing what it is. The sentence to use is short: “I can’t promise that, because if you tell me somebody is being hurt I have to pass it on, and here is who I would tell.” If the disclosure comes, the volunteer writes down what was said in the person’s own words, tells the coordinator the same day, and does not investigate. The coordinator follows the organisation’s safeguarding route: to children’s services or the police where a child is at risk, to the adult safeguarding team at the local authority in England, Wales and Scotland, or at the Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland, where councils have no social care function, when an adult at risk is involved, and to the charity regulator for that nation where the serious incident threshold is met: the Charity Commission for England and Wales, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, which calls these notifiable events, or the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland. A record relating to a safeguarding concern about a child is kept for decades: the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse recommended retention for 75 years.
Supervision means three different things
Supervision carries three meanings a scheme should never use interchangeably in its own documents. Line management supervision is an employment relationship: objectives, performance, pay. Coaching or clinical supervision is formal reflective practice, required by most counselling registers and by serious coaching bodies. Scheme supervision is what a volunteer mentor or befriender receives: a regular conversation with the coordinator about how the match is going and whether anything needs reporting. It is neither therapy nor appraisal. It is the safeguarding mechanism, and the first thing cut when a scheme is under pressure.
Six signs the line has already been crossed
- Contact escalates outside the agreed pattern: late-night messages, unplanned visits.
- Money appears: lending, holding a card, shopping with the person’s cash.
- Secrecy arrives, in either direction, and the coordinator stops being told things.
- The volunteer is the only one, where a professional is plainly needed.
- Tasks replace the relationship: appointments, forms, transport, personal care.
- The volunteer feels responsible for the person’s safety between sessions.
The mentor or befriender
- Says what they are not, at the first meeting, and repeats it when it is tested.
- Declines the task and reports it, rather than obliging once and mentioning it later.
- Brings the uncomfortable session to supervision, which is what supervision is for.
The person supported
- Is told at the start what this volunteer is not there to do, and who does those things.
- Is referred on properly, rather than handed a leaflet and left to it.
- Keeps the relationship where possible: being referred on should not mean losing the volunteer.
The scheme writes the boundary into the role description, names the professional route for each side before anyone needs it, and treats a volunteer’s report of drift as information rather than a complaint about them. A scheme whose volunteers keep crossing into counselling, advocacy or care does not have a volunteer problem. It has referrals it is not designed to hold, and should say so to whoever sends them.