Become a Volunteer for Marriage Care
Friday 11th October 2019Marriage Care, who specialise in helping couples build and sustain strong, fulfilling, healthy relationships, and provide support in times of relationship difficulty, is a charity seeking volunteers who live in our diocese.
Deirdre Peden, who has been a volunteer for over a decade, shares more information about the work the organisation does and her experience as a volunteer.
“I joined Marriage Care 10 years ago as a relationship counsellor and like many other volunteers, I have been able to use my skills and experience to impact many other areas of our work at local and national level. This has been an exciting and often challenging journey but ultimately extremely rewarding.
Marriage Care has experienced enormous growth in the Salford Diocese in recent years.
This has required a significant and sustained effort on our part as well as ongoing support from diocesan clergy. We now have established teams in Blackburn, Oldham, Manchester City Centre and Sale.
We are currently delivering Marriage Preparation to 200 couples per year, across the diocese, as well as supporting couples and individuals through major life challenges with the help of our relationship counselling service.
We aim to serve the couples who attend our marriage preparation days, giving them time to explore relationship hopes, fears and expectations as they embark on married life. We want to help them develop strong, healthy relationships built to weather the inevitable challenges, explore the benefits of lifelong commitment and catch a glimpse of a loving God, who accompanies them every step of the way. This encounter is deeply spiritual and deeply human for them and for us.
In the counselling room we humbly embrace the pain and suffering of the couples and individuals we meet there. We offer hope when they feel lost and help them find their way through the darkness to the peace and joy of a new beginning.
We have partnered with Caritas to tackle relationship poverty and the prevention of relationship breakdown. And we have formed the Alliance of Catholic Marriage Organisations to complement what parishes provide and offer additional support and accompaniment to couples throughout their Christian life journey. It is encouraging to know that Marriage Care impacts local communities and society, by helping couples build long lasting marriages and happy homes but there is so much more to do.
We are greatly in need of additional volunteers to build on this success. Apart from Counsellors and Facilitators working on the front line, there are many support roles required to enable our services to run smoothly. We aim to be flexible around volunteer skills and availability, offering some roles that can largely be carried out from home while others require a greater time commitment or travelling. I sincerely hope that you can help us to spread this message across the Catholic community and I look forward to hearing from you.”
For more information about these and other roles please visit www.marriagecare.org.uk/get-involved or email Marriage Care at volunteer@marriagecare.org.uk
