Vacancies

Join the trustee board at Solace

Solace is looking for trustees with lived experience of the asylum process or being a refugee, or people who would like to help shape and develop our services.

Would you like to support Solace to fulfil their mission to improve the lives of our clients through the provision of therapies to alleviate suffering and improve emotional wellbeing? We are looking for people who would like to be on the trustee board to support the development of our work.

Solace provides a range of therapies to refugees and asylum seekers across Yorkshire and the Humber area. Across the region we work with individuals, families and children who have faced persecution, and many of whom have witnessed or experienced violence or torture. As well as talking therapy, we provide group stress management sessions and a programme of pain management. In recent years, we have provided over 3,000 hours of therapy to more than 250 people year on year. Here’s what a client said about us in our feedback survey last year:

“[When I] Suffered from depression the therapist stood by me and supported me as a human being. I was always keen and could not wait to attend my sessions with the therapist to talk about what’s inside me. Solace is where you can be listened to, supported. Solace changed my attitude towards my life.” Asmaa 2020*

We are looking to recruit new volunteer trustees, with at least two having experience of the asylum process or being a refugee or migrant, to become part of our trustee board. We are looking forward to learning about work or life experience and skills that you can bring to the Solace board. Over the next few years we want to transform the way we work by ensuring people with lived experience inform how we develop our services and organisation. We are committed to this improvement in how we work, and to supporting our new trustees to become part of Solace.

Trustees can be based anywhere in Yorkshire and the Humber region as most of our meetings will be held on zoom. We will hold occasional meetings face to face in Leeds, and travel expenses will be paid for this.

Time commitment

As a minimum you would be expected to attend and participate in four meetings per year. There will be some preparation needed beforehand so you are able to share your views and actively participate in discussions. There would also be opportunities to contribute to other pieces of work in between the Trustees meetings if you would like to get involved. We are committed to supporting you, and offering you a warm welcome. We would spend time with you to understand your skills and aspirations, and would be very happy to talk about any support that would be helpful for you. We will provide a full induction, and offering ongoing mentoring and support if this would be useful.

If you are interested in becoming a trustee and would like to talk to someone about it – please email Elaine Goodwin, the Chair of Trustees Elaine@goodwin.org.uk

Volunteer Receptionist

We would love to have some reception and administration support at our Solace office in Leeds (Manor house, 1 Manor Street, Leeds LS7 1PZ). We are a wellbeing and mental health service for asylum seekers and refugees (registered charity 1104507). We support people on the phone, on Zoom, and face to face at our office on Manor Street in Leeds.

Times
Ideal sessions would be 9.15am – 11.15am on a weekday. If you could offer 1 or 2 of these sessions then we would love to hear from you.

Skills we need volunteers to bring

As this role involves communicating clearly with people who have English as a second language, we ask that you have a good level of English yourself, although it does not need to be your first language. (In fact other languages are a benefit!) A key skill is to be able to offer a warm welcome to visitors. We are keen for you to have some experience of computing – we use Microsoft Office programmes. Whilst some training can be provided, we do need you to have a basic level of skill in this area so that you will be able to support the administration staff. It is not essential for volunteers to have experience of the asylum system, but we welcome
interest from those who do.

Please email our Senior Administrator, Saba. saba[@]solace-uk.org.uk to request an application form.

You can download the information by clicking this document:

Volunteer Therapists Required (Leeds)

Half a day per week

Solace is a therapeutic service exclusively for refugees and asylum seekers. While based in Leeds for more than 13 years, it offers a range of services throughout Yorkshire, with many in partnership with others including the NHS, as well as various refugee sector organisations such as Refugee Action and Refugee Council.

We have a small team of clinicians and organisational staff who work together with volunteer counsellors and specialist therapists to offer individual, complementary, family and group therapy. All our clients have fled from their own country to seek safety in the UK, thus the therapeutic work is cross cultural and involves the use of interpreters.  As all have suffered many losses and many have experienced or witnessed violence, we are currently seeking to recruit more therapists who are experienced in working with traumatised people.  Many of our clients live with much uncertainty and stress as they navigate the complex UK asylum process while trying to adapt to their new cultural context, so knowledge of the asylum system is helpful.

We are looking for therapists who are qualified to Diploma level or above with a minimum of 2 years post qualification experience including working with traumatised people.  We offer an initial induction program with regular individual and group supervision and opportunities for further training and development.

Please have a look around our website  for more information about our work.

Please contact Solace an application pack. For informal conversation, please speak to Clinical Director Anne Burghgraef.

Telephone: 07483320405 Email: anne[at]solace-uk.org.uk