Living Well at Home Volunteer
Team: Living Well At Home
Department: Rehabilitation & Wellbeing
Time commitment: Approximately one hour each week
Line manager: Frances Cane
Location: Across the London Borough of Croydon area
DBS Level: Enhanced
Age: 18+

Why we need your help
• To enable us to provide a rehabilitation and enablement service to patients in their own homes.
• To promote independence and support to help someone to achieve their goal
• Increase patients’ self-confidence and ability to self-manage their difficulties or symptoms.

What activities will you be involved in as part of this volunteer role?

You will be providing rehabilitation for patients in their own home. This may include;
• Helping with exercises that may make things easier for them at home (for example standing from a chair)
• Supporting people to manage their breathlessness
• Helping a patient to put some techniques into practice that may help with day to day activities.
• Helping someone to mobilise Other activities include;
• Attending a joint visit with the therapist to be introduced to the patient and the exercises they will be doing.
• Dealing sensitively and politely with patients that you visit at home.
• Respect that you are in someone’s home and acting appropriately.
• Arranging further visits as agreed with the patient and the therapist within agreed hours.
• Promoting rehabilitation in all of your interactions with both patients and their families.
• Contacting the Living Well at Home team prior to and directly after a visit to ensure your safety at all times.
• Complete the visit report and submit it to the Living Well at Home team on the same day as the visit.

You will not be involved in the following;
• Toileting or personal care.

What you can gain from volunteering in this role

• Know you are helping dying people in your local community have access to care and support, whenever and wherever they need it.
• Experience of rehabilitation and really helping to make a difference to someone’s quality of life
• Opportunity to meet and work with interesting and diverse people
• Join an enthusiastic team, meet new people and get more involved in your local community
• Use and develop your skills, enhancing your CV if that is important to you
• Know you are helping dying people in your local community have access to care and support, whenever and wherever they need it. Training and support provided
• An Introduction to Supporting People at End of Life training, date to be confirmed.
• Staff and volunteer induction training (covering all mandatory training)
• Living Well at Home Project training. Up to 1 day, at the Sydenham site or by zoom, depending on your availability. (Training is flexible at present and we will try and fit in with your availability)
• Ongoing informal training specific to the patient that you are visiting
• Monthly supervision sessions with the Living Well at Home team.
• Contact with the Living Well at Home team for support or questions regarding the patient/family at any time during working hours.
• Reasonable travel expenses will be paid
• Support from the Volunteering team including a regular e-newsletter
• Volunteer handbook and volunteer workbook
• Regular updates and training through MyImpact

We are looking for someone who is
• Approachable and friendly and able to get on well with people of many different backgrounds
• Caring and committed to help improve the quality of life for our patients
• Able to work in a professional manner with patients who have a terminal illness
• Capable of completing entries in patient files and updating other written documents as instructed
• Enthusiastic about learning and keen to develop new skills
• Reliable and can be flexible in the offer of time
• Able to follow our policies and procedures to keep you, our staff, our patients and our customers safe
• Able to represent St Christopher’s and our values positively. Anything else you need to know
• There is a short settling in period to see if the role is right for you
• This role will require pre-volunteering checks, which will include a DBS Check. Having a criminal conviction will not necessarily prevent you from volunteering with us. Every situation is assessed on an individual basis.
• At St Christopher’s we believe that no volunteer should be out of pocket because of their volunteering. The reimbursement of reasonable out of pocket expenses incurred whilst volunteering will help ensure volunteering is accessible.

Commitment to volunteering

Signing up to be a volunteer with St Christopher’s Hospice is a big commitment and requires lots of training and support from the organisation. With this in mind, ideally you would be able to volunteer with us for a minimum of a year. We would also ask that you to inform your manager if you are unable to attend your shift with as much notice as possible.

Equality and diversity

St Christopher’s recognises the qualities and strengths that a diverse group of volunteers bring to the organisation and we therefore particularly welcome applications from underrepresented groups within the local communities and from a range of different cultures and backgrounds