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Friendship and support for you

If you are feeling lonely and isolated we can help.

Please note: due to current advice on Coronavirus, we are currently only providing a Covid-19 Telephone Befriending Service which offers help and support through conversations.

By helping to reduce your fears if you are experiencing anxiety and uncertainty; our telephone befriending project offers a friendly voice at a moment of increased isolation and loneliness. Contact us for further details.

Do you sometimes feel like this….

• Lonely with no extended family or friends around you?
• Would you like somebody to accompany you when you’re going out and about?
• Transport is a problem and you can’t get to the places you’d like to visit?
• You’d like somebody to pop in for a chat and a cup of tea?

Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody could…

• accompany you to a community café, a local group or activity of your choice?
• call in for a chat or take you shopping?
• take your dog for a walk with you?
• play a game of scrabble over a cup of tea?

We support many people just like you through our volunteer befrienders. They will give some of their own time to offer you companionship if you are feeling lonely or need that little extra help to get out and about and back into community life. We will visit you in your own home and you can decide what type of  befriending you would like. The choice is yours!

 We can help if you:

• feel lonely or isolated;
• live in Bridgend County Borough;
• live in sheltered or rented accommodation, housing association property or your own home;
• have suffered a bereavement and need support to get back into community life;
• need extra support with practical things like going for a walk or shopping;
• want to make new friends and participate in community activities or clubs, but don’t have the confidence to go there alone.

All of our volunteers will have followed a carefully planned training  programme and will be carefully matched with you. You will also receive regular contact from BAVO to ensure that you’re happy with the volunteer who is  supporting you  and with our befriending service

All of our volunteers will have undergone a DBS check to ensure your safety.

What happens if I ask for help?

After asking for support, we will come out to visit you and take some details. We will discuss what types of befriending you would like and will ask about your interests. This information will assist us with matching the right volunteer to you. Once we have matched a volunteer befriender, we will come and visit you at an agreed time. Your befriender will then continue to visit on a regular basis, if that is what you want.

Listen to Mair’s story here – 

We will keep in touch with you on a regular basis to ensure that you are happy and getting the most out of befriending. You can decide if you want our support to stop at any time.

For further information call BAVO, T: 01656 810400, E: bavo@bavo.org.uk

Further information can be found by downloading our befriending for people in Bridgend County Borough guide

Contact us

For further information, contact BAVO, T: 01656 810400 or E: bavo@bavo.org.uk