Tamsin Johnson, Relationship Advisor

Tamsin, 28, has been a Relationship Advisor with YouthNet since January 2014.

by The Mix Staff

Tuesday 19th April 2016

She decided to start volunteering with YouthNet as although she loves her job, she wanted to do something extra in her spare time and really wanted to do something that could help people, even just a little bit. Tamsin would love to be a counsellor with young people in the future and found the Relationship Advisor a great opportunity to explore that.

The Relationship Advisor role fits in perfectly with her full time job, allowing her to book in shifts to complete her volunteering at times that suit her and can be done from home on her computer. She’s a big reader and loves writing and thought the Relationship Advisor role would be a great chance to combine those interests, as well as helping young people.

There’s a great variety of comments and questions that Tamsin has to deal with, responding to family strife, relationship questions, the icky sex questions and friendships. Tamsin completes her volunteering across three different services that YouthNet provides – our community message boards, answering questions from our Ask A Question service, and expert live chats. All of these services require different types of responses and support – providing emotional reassurance, practical advice, signposting and encouraging our users to come back. It’s all part of our peer-to-peer method of giving and receiving support online that’s proven to be really effective.

Tamsin’s been given training for all of these services via our e-learning platform model. The training gives our volunteers skills in giving online advice and support, signposting and researching answers, providing emotional reassurance online and advanced skills in our specific services. It is completed from home and in her own time. This training is supplemented by an accreditation from OCN in Giving Advice Online worth A*-C GCSE.

Tamsin says this about volunteering for YouthNet…

“The training has been wonderful – the feedback and expert chats  are great ideas. I am really enjoying being a YouthNet volunteer and I feel like I can make a difference.”

The commitment of a Relationship Advisor is six months, but Tamsin is keen to continue volunteering with YouthNet for the forseeable future!