Volunteering

There are lots of agencies across the country that interact at different levels of intensity with offenders from befriending and prison visits to mentoring, acting as an appropriate adult, accompanying offenders to court and youth offender panels.  Although these are not strictly psychological placements, they are a way to gain face to face experience with offenders, with the settings and with the multi-agency environment that surrounds an offender. 

My first of these volunteering posts was with a charity that mentored ex-offenders, helping them to find work and get into education or training.  I found the induction and training invaluable.  I felt that this training was readiness to begin work with offenders and a step away from the theory behind offending behaviour, assessment and treatment that you receive on a Masters course.  Training from charities that work in this way with offenders, if presented well, should prepare you to hold your boundaries, to consider your personal safety, to be aware of offending behaviours, to be aware of the offence someone may have committed and to talk to ex-offenders as fellow people not just 'offenders'.

Volunteering in this way also gives you the opportunity to learn from the offender.  As someone on the independent route and not working in a prison, I learnt so much volunteering about how difficult things are for prisoners on 6-12 month sentences and can now understand why they are the group of offenders most likely to re-offend.  Working in this way also gave me the opportunity to understand how the offence they have committed can effect the training and work opportunities they can access.  For example one ex-offender I worked with had a drugs conviction and wanted to become a youth worker so that he could pass on his first hand experience of the system and keep young males away from drugs and prison.  As expected, no course would accept him to work with young people with this conviction, however this is sad because he is probably the best person to be sharing the experience and consequences of his actions with young people.

Charities also have many needs that you as a psychologist can offer to help with especially if you are enrolled on the Stage 2 Chartership route.  For example, two of the Stage 2 Core Roles are training and consultancy.  Charities and third sector organisations will often be grateful of the opportunity to have someone come and deliver FREE training and consultancy to them.  This is something that I have definitely experienced as I am completing one of my exemplars as a consultant to a London based charity working with offenders and another exemplar offering training to an organisation.  The key of course is to have built a good rapport with the charity or organisation, perhaps by having volunteered for them in the past and then to really sell your proposal to them. 

The benefit of having volunteered with the charity first is not only the development of a rapport but also that you will have been able to see what possible needs there are that you could help with and you will have an insight into the structure, nature and politics of the organisation and can therefore present an idea that fits within those three areas or is able to answer the questions that those three areas of an organisation will raise.  If you are going to propose an core role idea to a charity that you are volunteering with you need to make sure that it is going to be relevant to both the charity and your Stage 2 and that it fits within the politics of the organisation i.e. you are not stepping on anyone's toes or suggesting something that deviates from the charity's mission statement.  Anything you do as a trainee and for a core role will need to be offered for free and you will also need to be able to explain to the organisation what Stage 2 is and arrange for one of them to be your Designated Supervisor and what that will entail for them.  It sounds like a lot but it can be successful.

As always I will include some words of caution:
1. Do nothing without the support of your supervisor.  There can be lots of politics and issues arising through completing a core role, your role within the organisation depending on which core role you are completing (training instruction or consultant) and the demands of colleagues working for the organisations (they are under pressure often too!).  Sometimes you can feel pulled in different directions; a great learning experience but it is really important to have your supervisor's support.

2. Be prepared for constant change and for the work to be stop-start.  Charities often have a high turnover of staff, are dependent on funding and often under-staffed and overworked.  There may be times when you aren't updated on progress as often as you would like, people don't respond to your calls and emails and you generally feel isolated.  If you have previously volunteered with the charity these feelings should be moderated as you will have experienced first hand the nature of the organisation and the pressure they are under and will be more empathic when things like this happen.  Make sure you mention it in your practice diary, how you cope with it and your strategies for improving the situation.

I don't want anyone to feel put off by this, working with a charity can be fantastic experience and can offer brilliant opportunities to complete core roles.

Until next time........