Volunteer Training

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The most important qualification to be a volunteer for PCHAS is to have a desire to help fulfill the mission of PCHAS – to provide Christ-centered services to children in need and their families.

Basic Volunteer Responsibilities

Training:

While not all volunteer opportunities with PCHAS require extensive training, most volunteer opportunities that include direct contact with children in our care require a minimum of 8 hours of pre-service training and some require 20 to 30 hours of pre-service training. To maintain your status as a direct-care volunteer 8 to 20 hours of training is required annually, depending upon your job. CPR and First Aid certification is required for many of the volunteer opportunities.

Click here for Training Calendar

Confidentiality:

Information about the children and families with whom you will work is shared on a need-to-know basis. This means that we will discuss with you the information we feel is needed in order to safely and lovingly relate to the child. Questions can always be asked of your staff supervisor or the volunteer ministries coordinator if you are unsure or have concerns.

Because of the personal nature of your work as a volunteer, you will be responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of all proprietary or privileged information to which you are exposed while serving as a volunteer, whether this information involves a client, staff, volunteer or involves the overall agency business.
Failure to maintain confidentiality will result in termination of the volunteer’s relationship with the agency or other corrective action.

Criminal Background Checks:

All volunteers of PCHAS except Prayer Partners and members of Volunteer Groups will authorize PCHAS to conduct criminal background checks. If you have lived outside the state of Texas within the last five years, we will require you to participate in a fingerprint-based criminal history check.

Automobile Liability Insurance:

Volunteers are often asked to run errands and pick up items from the store for the PCHAS programs in which they work. Some volunteers even transport clients in their own automobiles. Therefore, PCHAS requires that volunteers who drive automobiles provide documentation of their auto liability insurance.

TB Testing:

The state minimum standards under which PCHAS is licensed requires all persons who have regular or frequent contact with children to be free of contagious tuberculosis. Therefore, direct-contact volunteers with PCHAS must be tested for TB and provide medical documentation of a negative test result. PCHAS will reimburse volunteers for the reasonable cost of this simple procedure.

Communication:

Volunteers will be responsible for communicating with the Volunteer Ministries Coordinator and their site supervisor. Volunteers will log their time on the job by signing in and out as they start and finish their work. They will keep a personal log of their work and provide that to the Volunteer Ministries Coordinator on a monthly basis. They will contact their site supervisor if they expect to be absent from work. If a volunteer is not scheduled to work, they may contact their site supervisor and request a schedule.

Behavior:

Volunteers are expected to model adult Christian behavior in actions, words and relationships.