Volunteer Counsellor

The Richmond Fellowship

London

Full-time

31st October 2025

Volunteer Counsellor - We are asking that applicants commit X3 client hours weekly for a min of a 12 month period, may include evening and weekend work.
This position is for those who are registered with BACP or working towards.
Located at 590 Seven Sisters Road, London N15 6HR

Haringey Recovery and Treatment Services (HARTS) delivers psychosocial and activity-based interventions for adults in recovery from drug and alcohol use. The service works in partnership with other local services such as drug and alcohol treatment services, family and young people’s services, social services, criminal justice, mental health teams and other community projects.

The Counselling and Psychotherapy Service is a team that provides time bound counselling and psychological therapies to adults in recovery from addictions and work is offered both face to face and remotely.

What will I be doing?

We welcome applications from volunteers wishing to see clients during evenings and Saturdays, as well as normal weekday hours. Sessions will be located across the Borough and can be conducted at the service, as well as at our many partner sites.
Core tasks:

Provide once weekly sessions
Maintain a minimum caseload of three clients
Attend a monthly case management meeting
Attend fortnightly internal or external supervision (external supervision is sourced by the Volunteer/ Student Counsellor)
Attend team meetings when required
Take part in training relevant to the role
Liaise with other professionals involved in clients’ care
Clinical recording on the case management system in compliance with the service’s clinical governance and risk management protocol
Volunteers will have completed counselling/psychotherapy/psychologist training and professional registration with a relevant governing body such as BPC, UKCP, BACP, BPS, AD (FDAP). To have completed at least 100 clinical hours.
If not intending to access the internally provided clinical supervision, to have the means to access external clinical supervision for their clinical work
Either be engaging in personal therapy or have at least one year experience of personal therapy.
Ability to work with people who may have offending behaviour, substance use and/or mental health difficulties with sensitivity and respect.
Capacity to reflect on their therapeutic work, consider the impact on them of working with challenging and complex clients and ability to discuss this in supervision.
To have good communication skills when dealing with staff, volunteers, clients, and other professionals.
To be committed, patient and reliable to support the aims of the service.
To have adequate IT skills.

What Support Will I Receive?

Induction and ongoing training relevant to your role
Fortnightly individual or group supervision
Monthly individual Case Management meeting
Access to our online training platform LearningKind
For Volunteer Counsellors: reasonable travel expenses reimbursed with proof of expenses

Please note this will be ongoing recruitment - we reserve the right to close this role early if the correct calibre of candidates have applied.

Who are we…
Waythrough launched in October 2024 following the merger of Humankind and Richmond Fellowship. Our vision is to break down the barriers that stop people getting the support they need to live a life they value. We tackle poverty and disadvantage in communities, through mental health, drug and alcohol, housing and related support.

We have almost 200 services around England – and nearly 3,500 amazing staff and volunteers who run them. Every year our services support around 125,000 people.

Bringing together two big organisations is not a small task and it’ll take a while to fully integrate our systems, processes and approaches. That’s why you will notice the jobs here are still branded ‘Humankind’. Next year we’ll be fully integrating our recruitment systems but for now they are separate.

Thanks for bearing with us – and don’t forget to check out the Waythrough jobs on the Richmond Fellowship and Aquarius job site .

Waythrough is an equal opportunities employer
We value unique perspectives and experiences that everyone can bring, and fully understand the strength in diversity and inclusion. We encourage applications from all backgrounds, regardless of race, gender, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, or disability. If you have a genuine passion for working for us, we want to hear for you. We also welcome applications from people with lived experience with substance use. If you require support with your application, please contact the Recruitment Team at people.recruitment@waythrough.org.uk