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Phoneline service
You can call us on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday night between 7 and 9pm on 01865 726893. If the line is engaged please do call back later. The helpline is staffed by a group of dedicated and trained volunteers. All of us are lesbian or gay and have been trained to offer a friendly and non-judgemental listening ear and to provide clear information. Your call will be completely confidential - we can't trace your number (although if you get an itemised bill, remember that our number will appear on it). We can provide up to date information about the local 'scene', social groups and support groups. We are happy to talk through any issue related to same-sex attraction, whether you are directly or indirectly affected. We can't tell you what to do but we will provide a listening ear and try to help you to think through a situation. It can be hard to pluck up the courage to call a helpline, but we believe it can often help to talk. Please feel free to give us a call!
Email service
You can contact us by email at
confidential@oxfordfriend.co.uk. You will receive an automatic reply acknowledging your message. Then within around a week one of our volunteers should send you a
considered response to your message.
As with our telephone service we take the issue of your confidentiality very seriously. We will do all we can to ensure that emails sent to us are not disclosed to anyone outside Oxford Friend.
It can help us if you put as much information in your email as possible. You can tell us whether you consider yourself to be gay, lesbian or straight or are not that sure. You could mention what age you are. And of course as much as possible information about the issue you would like to discuss with us.
To help maintain your confidentiality you could set up a free anonymous email address and use it to correspond with us. That way nobody is able to trace the email back to you if it is intercepted. And nobody at Oxford Friend will be able to identify you either. Many companies will supply free email addresses e.g. Yahoo or Hotmail.
Unfortunately we cannot guarantee to get back to you any sooner than a week after you send your email. This is because we are a relatively small organisation and our service is provided by a limited number of volunteers. If you need a more rapid response then you could try phoning us. Regrettably it is not possible for us to ensure that the same person will reply if you email us more than once. For this reason you might like to include previous correspondence with us in the text of your email.
External training
In addition to staffing the helpline and running our own internal training programme, Oxford Friend is also able to offer a training service for other groups or organisations in a number of related areas. These include:- equal opportunities, with regard to sexual orientation.
- sexuality awareness
- sexual health
- dealing with homophobia and discrimination within an organisation