BackCare

Call for new Helpline volunteers

21 Oct 2008

BackCare is looking to strengthen its team of Helpline volunteers.

Due to an increase in callers to our Helpline and our new email answer service, we are now looking to recruit new volunteers for our Helpline team.

The Helpline has been open since 2004 and answers over 1300 calls a year. We are open 10 sessions a week at the moment and need more volunteers to sustain and expand the line.

If you have back pain and/or a good knowledge of back pain issues why not consider joining our training programme and becoming a BackCare Helpline volunteer.

Our volunteers give information and support to the public on topics ranging from safe exercises for bad backs to concerns about whether to have spinal surgery and information about particular conditions, probably the most important thing we offer is a listening ear so our volunteers need to be sensitive, patient, non-judgemental and open-minded.

Volunteers work from home, as calls are routed from BackCare's offices. The time commitment is approximately three hours a week. Besides answering queries on the phone, the Helpline volunteers also operate our email answer service.

The next training course begins in January 2009 with a training day in central London. This will be followed by six telephone conference training sessions that you do from your own home in early 2009, followed by a further training day. It is hoped that the new volunteers would be ready to go on line in April 2009.

If you are interested please contact BackCare's Helpline Manager, Chris Hughes on 020 8977 5474 or email to discuss this further.