Support Us

Do you want to help and support children & vulnerable adults and be part of making a difference to their lives?

Would you like to guide a charity that supports parents and families in the Scottish Borders?

Relationships Scotland Borders (RSB) is a charitable organisation which was established when Family Mediation Borders (established 1991) took over the running of Couple Counselling Borders in April 2009 and rebranded. Since its inception 26 years ago, the charity has grown from a very small organisation offering mediation to around 30 divorcing couples to the organisation it is today and, although still relatively small, it is one of the largest voluntary organisations in the Scottish Borders receiving around 1,000 enquiries from the public, each year.

RSB is the only organisation specialising in parental separation and the only family mediation and child contact service provider in the Scottish Borders. Most referrals come from the courts and solicitors. Relationships Scotland Borders provides a holistic range of support for families, individuals and children affected by relationship breakdown and parental separation. Our main aim is to lessen the trauma and distress of conflict and family break-up. We provide both practical and emotional support.

Our key services are:

• Family Mediation – for parents and others including grandparents & step-parents

• Child Contact Support and Supervision – including hand-over support

• Family Support – intensive, specifically tailored and usually longer term practical and emotional support for families with more complex needs or entrenched behaviours. This includes helping to address the breakdown in social networks and security following family breakdown.

• Relationships and Individual Counselling (including Sexual Relationship Therapy)

If you’d like to learn more about both our Chair vacancy and Trustee vacancies or to apply for either of these roles, please email your CV to Carolyn Jackson @ ceo@rsborders.org.uk

Closing date: We are always keen to hear from anyone interested in joining our brilliant Board, so we don't have a closing date.

The Roles

Both the Chair & our Trustees are the people who make the top-level decisions for our charity. Our Board includes people with experience and skills in governing our charity and supporting families.  

We are looking for both a Chair and Trustees to help us ensure we manage our responsibilities effectively.  If you have experience in governance, fundraising, safeguarding or any other skills that will support us to focus on our work, please get in touch and have a chat about what you're looking for in supporting such a worthwhile charity.

You don’t necessarily need prior charity experience, but you will need empathy with our cause and a genuine interest in supporting families in our community.

We are a charity not a business, but we apply business principles to governing our organisation. We want to expand the diversity of our board, and strongly welcome applications from people from less-represented groups.

The focus of a trustee role is strategic, and trustees will not be expected to get involved in the organisation’s operations on a daily basis; however, regular contact and liaison with other trustees, our CEO, and employees is expected.

Our Board meets remotely every 3 months with trustees expected to attend all of the 4 Board meetings each year.  We ask for 2 hours of your time for each meeting and we may ask you to be part a specific sub-groups which will require a further 2 hours every 3 months.

In total, we ask for you to contribute around 16 hours a year to your Trustee role here at RSB.

What do you get as a volunteer trustee with our organisation?

• An opportunity to exercise your skills and experience, probably in a different environment or context

• An opportunity to influence and collectively-lead an organisation supporting children and families

• A chance to expand and implement your understanding of our work, as well as augment your experience of charities

• A boost to your career and CV, if needed

• Satisfaction of helping an organisation that supports local families, thus giving something back to your community

• Induction training from us; training, support and assistance as needed; reimbursement of reasonable expenses, if needed

What do we get?

• Your strategic skills, knowledge, understanding and experience in your relevant field

• Your abilities to influence plans for our charity’s future

• Enhancement to our overall governance and the Board of trustees; improvement in our procedures and support for our staff

• Your participation in our collective decision-making, contributing to all areas of our charity work

• Your enthusiasm

What do our beneficiaries get?

• Our continued support for local families and children, ensuring we are there for parents when they need us most

• A forward-looking and agile organisation, with a well-informed Board of trustees

• A well-governed charity, sustainable for the future

Many, many thanks for your interest in this very important role and for taking the time to find out a little more about what’s involved in supporting our RSB Board.

Carolyn Jackson

CEO RSB