Step into volunteering
Come on in...we want to hear from you.
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Volunteers outnumber staff in Victim Support and the Witness Service by about four to one, so clearly they are essential to the work of our charity. Most of our volunteers are involved in directly supporting victims and witnesses. People tend to focus on either work with victims in the community or supporting witnesses at court. But some of our volunteers do both kinds of work. Other volunteers work on our Victim Supportline, taking calls from victims and other people affected by crime. And some volunteers choose to do very specific things, such as helping young witnesses at court.
Volunteers help in lots of other ways too, with our IT systems, with administration, or in fundraising for example.
However you want to help, we’d like to hear from you!
Who can volunteer?
You don’t need qualifications or previous experience of this kind of work to volunteer for Victim Support. All you need is a willingness to help and a little time. We will do the rest.
How we help our volunteers
We really value our volunteers. Much of the work of our paid staff is about supporting volunteers, giving them direction and providing the training and systems they need to do a great job.
If you decide to join us, we can offer you:
- professional training, based on the same occupational standards used by the whole criminal justice system
- regular support and supervision
- the chance to meet and help people from all walks of life
- new career development opportunities
- the chance to experience team work with like-minded people
- ways to help shape the work and the future of Victim Support across the country
- a real opportunity to make a difference to people’s lives and help communities recover from crime.
And don’t worry about being ‘out of pocket’ as we refund your expenses.
A bit more about training…
Supporting victims and witnesses is important and sensitive work. That’s why we think good training is essential for our volunteers. If you decide to become a Victim Support or Witness Service volunteer, we’ll help you learn about:
- the different types of crimes and ways that people are often affected
- how the criminal justice system works
- how to assess what kinds of help and support people need
- improving your communication skills
- equal opportunities, diversity and confidentiality
- dealing with difficult and inappropriate behaviour
- how to claim compensation after a violent crime
- the special impact of crime on children
- personal safety.
This is all covered in the basic training. Once you’ve completed that, there are more specialist training opportunities for volunteers who want to focus on supporting victims of sexual and domestic abuse, hate crime, and for work with families of homicide victims or vulnerable and intimidated witnesses.
Supporter membership
All of our volunteers can get more involved in Victim Support’s work through becoming ‘supporter members’. This means you can have a voice in organisation-wide developments and a vote in electing other volunteers to represent you on a national committee called the Assembly. We’ll give you more information about this as part of the normal application process.
Other ways of helping
If you decide that supporting victims and witnesses isn’t really for you, there are plenty of other ways for you to volunteer to help. You can get involved in fundraising, training, administration, answering ‘phone calls, general help around the office and IT. Your local office can give you more information about the help we need in your area.
And if none of this sounds like the kind of thing you want to do, you can still help improve the lives of victims and witnesses through helping to support us financially. Whether it’s organising a fundraising event, making a donation, or even leaving Victim Support something in your will, we’ll make sure that your contribution makes a real difference.
How to apply
If you’re ready to go, just download the application form(181 KB) and equal opportunities monitoring form(189 KB) to your computer (you'll need Adobe Acrobat or another PDF viewer to view or edit these files). You can either complete it onscreen and email it back to us at volunteering@victimsupport.org.uk or you can print it out, fill it in and send or take it to your local office. You can't sign the electronic form if you want to apply by email but don't worry about that - you can sign it when you come to the office for the first time.
You can also download the Victim Support volunteer role description(149 KB), Witness Service volunteer role description(148 KB) and, if you're in London, you can also check out the Victim Supportline volunteer role description(158 KB). These will tell you what work is involved in some of our key volunteering roles.
If you have any general questions about volunteering with us you can call our volunteerline on 0800 840 4207, email volunteering@victimsupport.org.uk, or use the panel on the left to send us a message. You can also download a PDF of our 'Step into volunteering' information booklet(336 KB) if you'd like to read this later.
The 'small print'
As part of your application to volunteer for Victim Support, we have to do a check with the Criminal Records Bureau. This is for the protection of the victims and witnesses we help. But having a criminal record does not automatically disqualify someone from volunteering for our charity.
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