How can I volunteer?

Volunteering is crucial to the hospice movement in the UK. No hospice could function without its network of volunteers and their extraordinary commitment. If you are interested in volunteering you should contact your local hospice and ask to speak with the Voluntary Services Manager or Volunteer Coordinator. Most hospices have a full time person whose job it is to match volunteers to suitable tasks.

"You must be a good listener. And you must follow the rules. The Hospice is just glad for what you can do. They are delighted if you can give just one hour a week. This is the best job I have ever had. Never before in my life have I experienced such love and happiness. If happiness were taxed, I’d be in the highest bracket there is."

Hospice Volunteer

What do volunteers do for hospices?

Around 100,000 hospice volunteers across the UK are engaged in a wide variety of roles including:

• creative and recreational activities for day-care patients
• administration
• bereavement support
• complementary therapies
• running support groups for carers
• driving patients to day-care and hospital appointments
• visiting and befriending patients and carers in their own homes
• staffing hospice reception
• helping in the kitchen
• gardening and maintenance
• fundraising and working in hospice shops

Keeping people safe:

Most hospices have volunteers in a variety of roles, making an enormously valuable contribution. The skills, time, commitment and experience which volunteers have to offer allows hospices to give so much more to patients and families.

Around half of children’s hospices have volunteers actually working with life-limited or life-threatened children and their families, but there are many other ways in which volunteers can make a real difference to the successful running of the hospice.

Hospices perform appropriate CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) checks on volunteers who will be working within the hospice. Many hospices also have induction and training sessions, so it is often important that you can make an ongoing commitment to the work. However some hospices also have short term volunteering opportunities.

Remember even if you are not giving care to the patients and families first hand, anything you can do which saves or makes the hospice money will enable them to spend more on their care, and make a real difference to patients and families.