Both the volunteer and the person carrying out the discussion may be affected by things disclosed during discussions. If your group or organisation has an employee support service in place which includes volunteers, you may wish to remind the volunteer that it is available and share the contact details at the end of your discussion. In any case, you should remind the volunteer of your group or organisation’s duty of care towards its volunteers and confirm your willingness to deliver and maintain this. Contextualising this towards the COVID-19 environment will be critical. The resources listed in section 6.3 will help you with this. Staff carrying out the discussion may need to debrief with a colleague or the employee support service if they are exposed to distressing news. Where possible, the timing of these calls should allow for a short break in between.

We have referred to a conversation, but this may be a series of discussions over many platforms from text-based chats to phone or video calls to open-ended responses to surveys to which you reply, or other kinds of formal or informal communications. These are things you will be aware of any way in your practice. Here we simply highlight them as particular things to “look out for” when engaging with volunteers as we come out of lockdown.

In the next activity, you are asked to reflect on your context and consider what you need to ask your volunteers and anticipate where they might need guidance or support to return to their role.