Activity Squad
Spending more than a few minutes unwell in a hospital bed can feel like a lifetime for many people and lack of activity and mental stimulation can in some cases make you feel worse. Providing people in hospital with opportunities for mental and physical activity, within their capabilities, can lead to improvements in their own wellbeing and potentially help them to leave hospital sooner. Our Activity Squad volunteers are on hand to help provide activity to patients and in this role you will work as part of a team helping to deliver a range of activities to our Adult inpatients.
Activity Squad Tasks
The types of tasks you may carry out as an Activity Squad volunteer include:
· Running a planned activity session on a ward in a bay or dayroom—for example quizzes / bingo / music
· Supporting one to one activity with a patient for example—jigsaw puzzles or having a game of cards.
· Providing patient companionship and just a chance for them to have a chat.
· Arts and Crafts sessions in small groups or one to one.
· Reminiscence sessions and activities using our memory boxes.
· Themed activities to coincidence with national events—i.e. Remembrance and Christmas.
· Updating and looking after donated books around the hospital
Specific Activities
Alongside our volunteers coming in to support our Activity programme, we also have opportunities for volunteers to come in to deliver specific activities, for example Therapy dogs, Music and Arts and Crafts. If you already have a trained Therapy dog, are a talented musician or have experience in delivering an activity which you think may benefit our patients please get in touch to find out what our latest opportunities are and how you can get involved
Skills / Qualities required for this role
· Good communication Skills
· Friendly and good with people
· Patient and caring
· A good team player
· Empathetic and sensitive
· Creativity skills and ability to adapt activities to support different patients.
· Able to use own initiative
· Able to use or train to use different technology to carry out activities with patients.
· Willing once confident to lead activities.
