Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust

At Community Roots we recognise the importance of working side-by-side with people who have experience of accessing mental health services, or caring for someone who does.

Listening to and sharing our lived experiences of accessing care helps us to coproduce and co-deliver a wide range of preventative and recovery based health and wellbeing opportunities across Lancashire and South Cumbria.

If you have an interest in supporting others to prevent ill health or to support people in life beyond services, we have a range of opportunities available that ensure our Community Roots service is peer led:

• You may like to support our wide ranging curriculum by developing new sessions, gaining facilitation skills or supporting our practitioners to prepare and deliver training sessions.
• Or, you might like to hit the road on board our engagement and outreach vehicle, HARRI, helping us connect people with health and wellbeing opportunities local to them.
• We also welcome applications to support learners in discovering our courses, completing enrolment forms, gathering feedback or supporting as a study buddy should someone feel apprehensive about attending our courses on their own or accessing us online.

If you have a kind and welcoming nature with an interest in supporting people in your local community, we would welcome your application to work alongside our compassionate and caring team.

We will:

• Offer full training necessary for your role
• Support your development through a wide range of opportunities and projects
• Allocate you a personal mentor and support your volunteer experience through our regular groups and meetings
• Support your leadership development through Community Organising training

Volunteer duties may also include:

• Offer a warm welcome to visitors, partners and clients of the service and on board HARRI
• Engage with prospective learners to offer pastoral support
• Engage with locality Advisory Groups, Curriculum Development Groups and Evaluation Groups to co-develop the recovery and resilience service
• Support colleagues in the co-delivery of recovery learning opportunities, enhancing offers from a lived experience perspective
• To prepare learning spaces and materials with resources provided by LSCFT staff
• To support any learners who may become distressed during curriculum offers through peer support
• A Standard DBS will be needed for this role. (The possession of a criminal record does not necessarily disbar applicants from this role – you can talk in confidence to a member of the Community Roots team or Volunteer Service if you have any concerns about this.)
• To collate enrolment and evaluation documents during each recovery learning offer to ensure quality data collection
• To understand and speak with confidence about Community Roots & HARRI LSCFT across internal sites, community locations and in forums, engagement events
• To involve and enhance learner experience of the service offer through signposting and learning pathways
• To demonstrate clear boundaries when working with vulnerable people and escalate any issues beyond a volunteers role accountability.

Essential requirements for this role are:

It is desirable that applicants have lived experience as a person who has used or who has cared for someone who has used mental health services, so there is a level of shared experience and understanding with members when engaging with them. All volunteers must be able to make their own way to and from Community Roots sites, or HARRI locations. For this travel expenses will be reimbursed as an out of pocket expense.

Volunteers should have a welcoming demeanour with a strong sense of excellent customer service and be able to support people through demonstrable lived experience and recovery. All volunteers must have a good understanding of confidentiality, privacy and dignity and be able to act in accordance with Lancashire & South Cumbria’s Information Governance policy.

Volunteers must be able to understand and adhere with all Trust training offered.

For this role applicants must be over the age of 18

To apply please click the link below

Apply here

Lancashire & South Cumbria Foundation Trust recognise and value the importance volunteer support is to us and our patients. Volunteering is a long term commitment (for example 9 – 12 months), and to bring continuity and stability for patients and staff, we ask volunteer to support by doing the same periods each week, which are discussed and agreed by the volunteer and volunteer supervisor.

This volunteer role is to support the Mental Health Liaison Team at Blackpool Victoria Hospital with completion of Friends & Family Test (FFT) feedback. This feedback is important to the Trust as it helps us plan how we deliver our services by replicating what works well and improving what isn’t. The volunteer will support with sending out FFT cards to services users, assisting with collating the responses and inputting these onto the database. The volunteer will also be involved in gathering real time feedback by phoning a list of named people (who have given consent for a volunteer to contact them) and asking them the FFT survey questions listed on the form, documenting their responses and then inputting their feedback onto the database or directly inputting the feedback during the phone call. 

A Standard Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check is required for this role. There is no cost to a volunteer for a DBS check. You must be over 18 years old to apply for this role. 

Essential requirements for this role are:

• Good communication skills
• Clear handwriting
• Proficient IT skills
• Ability to follow instructions
• Willingness to help and support staff and patients 
• Demonstrates empathy and compassion
• Calm manner
• Comfortable working in a fast moving environment
• Comply with all Trust Policies and Procedures in relation to information governance and confidentially