Christmas call companion role specific training

Training 4: Addressing difficulties

It's possible that, at some point, you may encounter challenges in your Christmas call companion role.

Because you’re supporting the older person by phone in a familiar environment where you feel relaxed and comfortable, it can at times be easy to forget that you’re representing Re-engage a charity that has established policies and procedures, as well as rules and boundaries for the relationship you’re building with the older person.

So, with that in mind it’s important that you remember that you won’t always be able to respond to the older person in the same way that you would respond to an older person in your personal relationships.

Enforcing boundaries 

The Christmas call companion service has boundaries and limits, and it may at times be challenging to enforce those boundaries without shutting down the conversation with the older person. The older person may be reluctant to accept that you’ll only be calling them once a week, for example, or they may want you to give them advice.

Remember that you’re not there to give advice, or to tell the older person what to do about situations in their life. It’s not part of the role of a Christmas call companion to solve the older person’s problems for them. You’re there as a listening ear throughout the month of December only.

If the older person does ask you for advice, rather than tell them what to do, you could offer to talk through with them what they think their options might be and how they feel about each option. In this way, you can help them to find their own solutions and to see their own way forward. Please be aware that any advice you give could be seen as advice on behalf of Re-engage and that's not the service that we’re providing.

We know that difficulties can arise between an older person and a volunteer from a conflict of expectations. The older person will have been informed that advice such as financial advice cannot be given by their Christmas call companion, but they may forget so a gentle reminder may be needed. You could refer them back to their conversation with the Re-engage team.

If the older person is asking you for something that you can’t provide, you’ll need to remind them that you can't deal with their problems directly. You can always refer back to the signposting information on the Re-engage website and pass on to them the contact details of other national services that may be able to help them.

You can find all the information you need on boundaries in your volunteer handbook and on the Re-engage website. It’s essential that you maintain these boundaries and, as always, let the Re-engage team know if there is anything you are unsure about or need help with.

Difficult conversations 

During your time as a Christmas call companion, you may experience conversations with your older person. For example: they want to talk about things that are upsetting or difficult for them, and which caused them distress. Those conversations can be challenging for you to deal with, both at the time and afterwards. 

When someone is feeling distressed, simply feeling really listened to can be very powerful. Your role is to provide a listening ear not to fix their problems.

When someone is upset, telling them to look on the bright side or just changing the subject can feel dismissive of their feelings. Instead, you should use your active listening skills as practised in Training 2 to help them talk through their feelings.

Here are some helpful things to say if you're feeling stuck (of course, these are just examples, you can use phrasing you are comfortable with):

• It’s OK, just take your time.
• How long have you been feeling this way?
• Are you able to tell me more about this?
• How is this affecting you day to day?
• How are you coping with that?
• It sounds like you’re struggling at the moment.

Empathy and sympathy

There is a difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is when you express feelings of how painful we think something must be for someone such as:

• “You must feel terrible.”
• “Oh, you must be devasted.”

When you say things like that, a couple of things are happening.

1. You’re making it about yourself, for example I’m so upset to hear that.
2. You’re presuming to know how the person is feeling when you can’t truly know.
3. You could amplify the older person’s feelings of pain and distress when those feelings may already be overwhelming for them.

Empathy is when you accept (and don’t judge) a person’s thoughts and feelings and seek to understand them. Empathy could be phrases like:

• “That sounds very upsetting, scary, worrying for you.”
• “It sounds like things have been difficult for you.”
• “I’m sorry this has happened to you.”
• “I’m so sorry you’re going through this.”

When you react with empathy, you’re validating someone’s feelings and letting them know it’s ok to feel that way.

Tone of voice, pace and using silences etc are also important. All of this gives an older person space and time to think and allows them to talk about things that can be difficult or painful for them to express.

Just by listening to the older person, you allow them to sort through confusing and difficult thoughts and feelings that they might not have been able to talk about before.

Offloading 

After you’ve had a conversation with an older person in distress, it's quite likely that you yourself may be feeling upset or distressed. It’s important that you take steps to offload those feelings and talk to someone about it. Since the older person has the right to privacy, you may not be able to talk about their situation fully with your family or friends, but you can always talk to the Re-engage team.

People generally volunteer with Re-engage because they want to help people. They want to give something back and make a positive difference. When you support an older person through your volunteering role, you’ll often give something of yourself because it helps you empathise and build rapport. You do this because you care, but you must also make sure you look after yourself.

Things can affect us more deeply than we perhaps expect them to and that's completely normal and understandable. Please don’t feel that you should be able to manage these feelings on your own, or that you are burdening anyone else with them if you want to talk about them. It's essential to seek support after a conversation that has left you feeling distressed. You can contact the Re-engage team by emailing knowledge@reengage.org.uk or by calling 020 7240 0630 (office hours 9am-5pm Monday to Friday).

Difficult calls

Sometimes the calls can be difficult, and an older person may struggle to engage. Be patient because it may be that they have simply lost the art of conversation, it may take them some time to regain their confidence. However, if your calls remain difficult, please speak with the Re-engage team for support. Talking it through can help and the Re-engage team have lots of experience supporting volunteers and older people.

You may also find your calls difficult because the older person is quite negative, for example talking a lot about their health concerns. It's important not to be dismissive and to be an active listener as best you can. However, sometimes helping to steer the conversation to a more positive topic can help lift the older person's spirits and distract them from their worries.

If you have concerns about whether you and the older person are right for each other, or if the older person experiences changes in their health such as hearing or memory loss that’s impacting on your calls, then please do contact the Re-engage team as soon as possible.

Ending a call

The calls you make to an older person will be extremely important to them, and possibly the only social contact they’ve had for some time. Ending conversations with older people can be challenging, both for you and for the older person.

For you:

• You may lack confidence in how to bring conversations to a close with sensitivity.
• You may worry about the older person and what may happen after the conversation.
• The older person may keep returning to the same topic.

For the older person:

• The older person may feel listened to and not want that feeling to end.
• The older person may not know how to end the conversation.
• The older person may be alone with their problems or feelings.

Summarising can be a useful skill to use at this point, for example:

• “You’ve shared how things have been difficult financially for you since you lost your partner, and how this has caused issues in your relationship with your children, which has been very upsetting for you and for your children.”
• “We’ve talked about how you might speak with your bank and also get an appointment with Citizen’s Advice to look at what benefits might be available to you.”
• “How do you feel about what we’ve talked about?”

Or you could use phrases that can help signal that you need to bring the conversation to an end such as:

• “Before we finish…”
• “We’ve been talking for a while now…”
• “Just before we say goodbye, shall we…”

Another way to finish the conversation is by looking ahead to what they will do after the call has ended, even if it's something as simple as having a cup of tea or getting something to eat. If you’ve agreed to read, watch, or listen to the same thing before your next call as discussed in Training 3, remind them that you’ll talk about it the next time you speak.

Always end the call by reminding the older person when you’ll speak to them next.

Missed calls

From time to time an older person may miss their pre-arranged call. In most cases, there is a simple explanation for this, from forgetting all about it to being distracted by an unexpected appointment or visitor. However, we understand it can be a worry when they don't pick up the phone as arranged.

This is what you should do.

1. Make three calls five minutes apart.
2. In the first call, leave a message informing the older person that you have called and that you’ll call back in five minutes (if you are able to leave a message).
3. In the second call, leave a message informing the older person that you have called and that you’ll call back in five minutes (if able to leave a message).
4. In the third call, leave a message asking them to call Re-engage on 0800 716 543 and then contact the Re-engage team by emailing knowledge@reengage.org.uk (office hours 9am-5pm Monday to Friday) to let them know what has happened.
5. One of the Re-engage team will try to contact the older person the following day and will contact you if we’ve been able to speak to the older person. If we’re still unable to reach the older person, we’ll ask you to try them again the following week and to update us on your progress.
6. If the older person misses their call the following week, then we’ll ask you to follow the above process again and repeat steps 1-5.
7. If you and the team at Re-engage are still unable to contact the older person, the Re-engage team will continue to reach the older person by contacting their emergency contact (if they have provided one) or the person who has referred them (if they did not refer themselves).