Mental Health Volunteer | Inpatient and Recovery Clinics

Would you like to do activities with clients to contribute to their recovery? You are very welcome!

What will you be doing?
Arkin is the largest specialist mental health organization in and around Amsterdam. In our inpatient clinics and recovery clinics, clients with psychiatric issues are admitted. They stay for shorter or longer periods to stabilize, recover, and resocialize. Precisely because of the sometimes complex issues, a recovery-oriented treatment process is worked on with the clients.

With the activities you will do with them, the starting point is: what *can* someone do, what possibilities are there? From there, a perspective on recovery is worked on, which often begins with small steps. You can play a beautiful role in this because you come from the outside. From your position in society, you provide that little bit of equal attention that brings relaxation and expresses acceptance. In doing so, dignity and safety come first.

As a volunteer, you have equal contact at eye level. Therefore, it is not the intention that you fall into a caregiver pattern or start coaching clients. That is for the professionals. For that reason, and due to privacy considerations, you cannot be acquainted with medical files or diagnoses or participate in treatment discussions.

We would love to hear about your skills, hobbies, and wishes and will tailor these to our possibilities. You could think of the following activities:

• You offer hospitality in the common room. You are there for a chat, you invite clients for a cup of coffee or tea, a conversation, a game, or a creative activity (one-on-one or with a few clients). Together with clients, you keep the room tidy or you help clients tidy up their own rooms. In this way, you contribute to the therapeutic living environment.
• You prepare healthy, simple meals with clients: doing the shopping, cooking, consuming the meal together (also with staff), and cleaning up.
• You assist with creative activities alongside activity coordinators or you bring your own hobbies in. You can exercise with one or more clients in our sports hall. Or you go outside to do something with a client, the latter in consultation with the nursing staff.
• Sometimes it is possible that when you and a client have a good connection, you can be paired together as buddies.
• There is also room for organizing and supervising activities that you enjoy and have a passion for.

A second volunteer can be deployed for all these activities, so if you know someone in your network who is also interested, please let us know. For our clients, continuity and structure are important, and therefore we assume that you want to commit yourself for at least 6 or 12 months, for example 4 hours or more per week or 2 weeks. Depending on the clinic where you will be deployed, this can be during the day, early evening, on all weekdays, and weekends.

• You have an affinity with the client group.
• You want and are able to do activities with mental health clients in an equal and informal manner. Because the clients have not yet recovered, they do not always communicate and react logically.
• You are aware that substantive guidance and treatment are the responsibility of the professionals, not you.
• You are socially skilled and can reflect on your own behavior.

A Certificate of Good Conduct (VOG) is a standard part of our application procedure, so that together we ensure a safe and reliable working environment.

Want to know more about this vacancy?
For further information, you can contact Marjan Holla (Arkin Volunteer Center) at telephone 06-23776211 or Erik Berkhout (Arkin Volunteer Center) at telephone 06-31666842, or you can apply via the application button below directly for a telephone introductory interview (approx. 20 minutes).

• A staff member from the clinic is always present whom you can rely on.
• You will receive an induction where you will get explanations about providing structure to clients, about mutual treatment, and about behavior that guarantees a safe environment for yourself, clients, staff, and visitors.
• You can participate in a digital introductory meeting and a one-day training 'psychopathology & safety' in which situations are practiced with an actor.
• In addition to meaningful use of time and learning opportunities, we offer a standard minimum expense allowance.