Volunteer Co-ordinator

Job description

**Volunteer Co-ordinator - Age UK Hull**

**£22,500 pa - Full time - permanent**

**Location: Hull and East Yorkshire **(Regular travel required across the region) - Hybrid working available

Age UK Hull has a vision “that older people get the services they need where and when they need them.” We operate across the Hull and East Yorkshire areas.

We have some exciting plans to expand all our services and require a Volunteer Co-ordinator who will recruit and embed volunteers across the organisations services.

**Background**

Age UK Hull has a long and proud history of delivering a range of services for older people, and utilising volunteers in all aspects of this work. Before the Covid-19 pandemic volunteers were embedded throughout the organisation, from face to services to back-office functions.

However, like many organisations, as soon as the Covid-19 pandemic struck we had to cease all face-to-face service delivery and the staff team worked from home. This sadly saw virtually all our volunteering opportunities disappear overnight. We also moved out of our physical delivery centre, from which we used to deliver a lot of our services.

As we began to resume more face-to-face work in mid-2021 our efforts were very much focused upon establishing new forms of community-based services for older people, something the team over the last 12 months has achieved extremely successfully.

Now that we have established services in place, we are now able to redevelop our volunteering strategy, engagement plans and ensure that volunteers can play a crucial and valued role across all of Age UK Hull.

**Age UK Hull**

As an organisation we have been active across Hull and East Yorkshire for over 70 years - so we’re well known and well rooted in the region. Like many organisations, the last few years have been challenging, and whilst some of those challenges remain, we are continuing to handle them well.

Our recently appointed CEO brings drive and passion for developing effective, meaningful and needs led services for older people and he’s leading a strategic refresh and repositioning of the organisation. We’ve relocated, freeing up resources to enable us to continue delivering much needed work with older people and their carers across the region.

The organisation is staffed by a committed and skilled workforce, who have many years’ experience in delivering excellent services for older people. Whilst of course it was hard work, they managed the impact of Covid-19 extremely well and played a crucial role in ensuring older people were supported. They’ve got great roots in the communities we serve and great ideas on how we can develop further. So you would be joining a great team.

Overall, we’re in good place and we hope that you will consider joining us for the exciting and fulfilling journey ahead, ensuring that the older people of Hull and East Yorkshire get the services they need where and when they need them.

For more information visit our website.

**Our Volunteer Plans**

Currently we have over 100 volunteers engaged in delivering our befriending service and these volunteers are well serviced by our Befriending Co-Ordinator.

We want to widen the volunteering opportunities across our other core service areas:

- Information and Advice
- Positive Activities
- Day Services
- Social Groups
- Physical activities (e.g. Walking football. Movement to Music)
- Fundraising
- Administration and Support
- Develop wholly volunteer led provision.

When we were based in our previous physical centre, volunteers were a “golden thread” running throughout everything we did, and we want to return to that.

We’re also experiencing unprecedented levels of demand for our services, and for the first time in many years, we’re having to turn vulnerable older people away from some of our services as we just don’t have the capacity to meet the demand.

Recruiting, training and supporting volunteers to support our work will enable us to reach many more older people, significantly adding value to our current work.

We’ve already begun to do some of this work. We’re engaged with volunteering initiatives across Hull and East Yorkshire, and this is already seeing us attract volunteers. So, if you join us, then this role certainly isn’t starting from scratch, but it would be pivotal in developing many more volunteer opportunities across the organisation and ensuring that we recruit, train and support volunteers to fulfil those opportunities. You’d also be assisted in the role by a Volunteer Support Assistant - with whose recruitment you would assist, and then line manage.

Our recently appointed senior management team, CEO and Services Manager, are already forging ahead with some key changes across the organisation, and these will ensure that the Volunteer Co-ordinator has the freedom and flexibility to operate as they need, and receives the support required to be effective in the role.

A key p