Crisis Line Volunteers
DOWNLOAD APPLICATION
Crisis line volunteers are the largest group of volunteers at the Distress Centre.
They are on the front line working directly with our clients. If you are over the age of 18 and
would like to take an active role in helping others in your community, then this is the job for you!
How to Apply
Read the information below, then click here
to download an application form (requires Acrobat Reader, available free from
Adobe).
Completed forms may be returned to the Volunteer Training Coordinator by:
If you have any questions, please call the Volunteer Training Coordinator at 403-266-1634.
Job Description
The crisis line volunteer job includes:
- Extensive training in preparation for volunteering
- Answering all 5 Distress Centre phone lines
- Providing crisis support and information and referral services
- Exploring caller concerns
- Clarifying caller feelings
- Assessing suicide risk
- Helping callers make plans of action
- Collecting and providing data from client calls
Commitment and Shifts
To ensure that we continue providing the best service we can, we ask our
volunteers to make a commitment to work 4 shifts per month, or a total of 48 shifts for the first year.
After the first year we ask for a commitment of 2 shifts per month for volunteers
wishing to continue, and volunteers are given the opportunity to become leadership volunteers.
Training
Distress Centre volunteer training is well-respected within the community.
The comprehensive training consists of 36 hours of experiential classroom training including topics
such as communication, crisis intervention, relationships, suicide, addictions, domestic violence,
mental health, and grief & loss.
Schedule
- Training for crisis line volunteers is provided over a 3 week period.
- Training runs:
Tuesday 6:15pm-9:00pm
Thursday 6:15pm-9:00pm
Saturday 9:00am-4:00pm
- All training sessions must be attended, and make-up sessions will be available if you must
miss a session.
- Once classroom training is finished there will be 4 supervised training sessions on the
crisis lines.
Benefits
Working as a crisis line volunteer can be a richly rewarding experience that
provides opportunities to:
- Increase self-awareness
- Improve interpersonal skills
- Meet like-minded people and form new friendships
- Participate in various social activities planned throughout the year
- Gain experience for any career (social work, psychology, criminology etc) that deals with people