Role: Home Support Volunteer

Responsible to: Prospect@Home Team Leader

Accountable to: Head of Volunteering, Learning and Inclusion

Hours: 3-4 hours a week, at least once a week and may include weekends.

Prospect Hospice’s vision is of a community where death is no longer a taboo, and everyone lives and dies well. We provide excellent, personalised, and compassionate care for everyone in our community who is affected by a life-limiting illness. We work in close partnership with other organisations – and specifically with local health and social care professionals – to ensure that anyone can access the best possible care whenever and wherever they need it, and we do so completely free of charge.

Description of role:

Our Prospect@Home Support volunteers provide practical support and companionship to patients in their own homes, complementing the care of Prospect Hospice staff. From a telephone call to attending appointments or running errands, your activities will be determined by the patient as we support a person-centred approach, maintaining patient dignity at all times.  Maintaining patient confidentiality is essential as well as ensuring our patient records are kept up to date following every session.

Role Responsibilities:

The role is varied, and the length of support required by a patient can differ.  Some socially isolated patients might need some support attending community activities or groups. Others may need a practical hand washing up or doing some hoovering. Every week will be different. Your role is crucial in providing companionship and a listening ear when a Prospect Hospice staff member isn’t there. Your feedback information is crucial in helping staff understand if a patient’s condition is changing.

This is a lone working role, and you will need to follow the lone working procedures.  You’ll be trained to enable you to carry out the role in accordance with legal and statutory guidelines, whilst maintaining strict confidentiality and boundaries. Your Team Leader will ensure you’re briefed with any relevant changes about the patient before your visit begins.

You’ll never be asked to undertake any medical care, personal care or engage in therapeutic or counselling conversations, nor will you be insured to carry out these activities.

Everyone at Prospect Hospice works to a set of core values – we are authentic, specialist, person-centred, inclusive, resilient and pursue excellence.

How we bring our values to life everyday:

• We take responsibility for our actions and behaviour, always being our authentic selves whilst being welcoming and caring to our patients and colleagues.
• We are experts educating, training, sharing our knowledge and influencing others. We maintain our professionalism in all our interactions.
• We are respectful of patients’ dignity, respect each person as an individual and work with compassion to care for our patients holistically.
• We seek support when needed and provide support to others. Team communications are so important when lone working.
• We evidence the provision, impact and learning gained from patient interaction.

Keeping you safe:

Every volunteer role is risk assessed to ensure you and the people you come into contact with are kept safe, and you should familiarise yourself with the risk assessment for your specific role before undertaking activities. Alongside this, you’ll have mandatory training you’ll need to complete before fully starting your new role. Your safety and well-being is important to us, and we ask that you let us know if anything doesn’t feel right at any time.

In some roles you may be given a uniform you’ll need to wear, but we will make sure we let you know about that before you join the team.

As this role is in direct contact with vulnerable adults, we will need to complete a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check before you can volunteer.

Additionally, you can claim out-of-pocket expenses incurred travelling to your location on submission of a claim form and receipts. The person overseeing your role will be able to talk you through how to do this.

Skills and Experiences:

Our promise to you:

Our volunteers are so important to us, quite simply we would not be able to do what we do without you.  In return for your valuable time, we commit to making sure you are well supported in your role. We will ensure you receive a thorough induction and training.  We run a series of events to thank you for your contribution, and volunteers have access to a range of benefits (subject to availability), thanks to the generosity of some of our local businesses.  The person who is responsible for your role is available to support you and answer any questions you may have day to day, and they will also provide regular catch-up sessions to review your activities, ensure you and the patient(s) you are supporting remain safe, and provide development as appropriate. For concerns relating to your volunteering experience, the Voluntary Services team is always available.