St Clare Dementia Support volunteer

We need you!

We are looking for a skilled and friendly individual to join our team as a St Clare Dementia Support volunteer, to help deliver support to local people living with advanced dementia, and their carers.

What is St Clare Dementia Support? Our St Clare Dementia Support service follows the principles of Namaste Care, an internationally-recognised person-centred approach supporting people with advanced dementia to engage in meaningful activities to improve quality of life. Namaste Care is delivered using a combination of multisensory techniques and personalised resources. These activities may include:

• offering gentle touch, e.g. through hand massage
• playing favourite music
• making/looking through a memory box
• reading favourite books/poems
• encouraging gentle movement

St Clare Dementia Support involves:

• Making weekly visits by a volunteer for up to two hours in the person’s own home (with a carer present), in the Hospice, in a residential care home OR providing support in a group setting in the community (eg. at a dementia café)
• Leading personalised activities for the person to promote their wellbeing and quality of life
• Providing support for carers and families to incorporate Namaste Care techniques into their daily routine
• Offering emotional support to carers and families

What are the key tasks of this role?

• Visiting your community member and their carer on a weekly basis (for up to 10 weeks)
• Planing and providing meaningful activities, including sensory based activities e.g playing familiar music, reading a poem, providing hand massage etc
• Maintaining appropriate boundaries with your community member and their family
• Supporting and empowering the carer to continue Namaste Care 
• Attending monthly volunteer ‘catch ups’ to share and reflect
• Completing session notes in a timely manner and sending to your volunteer supervisor after each  session
• Attending all appropriate training for the role

What skills, experience or personal qualities will I need?

• An interest in dementia care
• Clear and sensitive communication skills
• The ability to work independently
• Good interpersonal skills
• IT literacy – including the ability to confidently use, and take part in sessions via Zoom/Microsoft Teams etc.
• Patience, empathy and a non-judgmental approach
• Reliable

The difference this role makes to St Clare Hospice…

By participating in this project you will:

• Raise awareness across our catchment area that St Clare Hospice wants to support people living with dementia, and their carers
• Provide direct intervention to people living with dementia
• Support people living with dementia to live well
• Give people a better understanding of our work and what is available to them more widely at St Clare Hospice. They will therefore have better access to our services in future.

Your support will help us meet our strategic aims of:

1. Reaching significantly more people who are facing death, dying and loss in our local communities.
2. Supporting our communities to become more resilient, to support each other and to remain independent for as long as possible.
3. Seeking partnerships with other organisations to deliver better care for our patients.

Underpinning our core values:

By volunteering with us, you’ll be part of a community that celebrates St Clare Hospice’s core values of compassion, integrity, respect, excellence and team work. Everyone who is a part of the St Clare team is expected to embody this approach in their work, ensuring that our Hospice can continue improving and meeting the needs of local people facing death, dying and loss.

Please click on the image below to enlarge it:

More information

For more information about this role, including: the benefits you can expect when joining our Hospice; the training and support you will be given in your role; and other details about volunteering with St Clare, please read the full Volunteer Role Description.

Please click here to read the full St Clare Dementia Support Volunteer role description

Apply to volunteer in this role

Thank you for your interest! If you think you’d be a good match for this exciting volunteering role at St Clare, we’d love to hear from you.

Please fill in the form below and we will get back to you as soon as we can.