At Prospect Hospice, we provide outstanding, personalised and compassionate care for everyone in Swindon, Marlborough and the surrounding areas affected by a life-limiting illness, completely free of charge. For more than 40 years, we’ve been a dedicated, non-hospital, end-of-life care service for patients and their loved ones - around the clock, every day of the year. Our mission is to ensure that anyone can access the best possible expert care whenever and wherever they need it – whether at the hospice or in their own home. As a charity, we only exist because of the generosity and support of our amazing local community.
Find out about the range of end-of-life care services that we offer to patients and their families. These delivered free of charge and are designed to provide compassionate, personalised support during every stage of a life-limiting illness in every kind of care setting, to anyone who needs it.
We couldn’t do what we do without considerable support from our local community. Find out all the different ways in which you can support Prospect Hospice, including fundraising, volunteering and purchasing from our shops. All contributions are greatly appreciated and enables us to deliver care that is free of charge to our patients and their families.
Our café sits at the heart of our hospice in Wroughton and serves a range of delicious home cooked meals to suit all tastes. Whether you're looking to catch up with friends over lunch or relax with coffee and cake, our Heart of the Hospice café has you covered.
Whether shopping with us in person or online, or donating your pre-loved goods, we thank you for supporting us through our shops where you help to raise around £2million a year for Prospect Hospice.
We pride ourselves on being a great place to work and we're always looking for outstanding people to join our team at the hospice across all areas of the charity.
Prospect Hospice is the leading provider of education and training for end-of-life care in Swindon and north Wiltshire. Working closely with you, our colleagues within partner organisations, we want to ensure that the very best care is available to everyone facing the end of life. This is why we provide education and development opportunities, all of which aim to encourage learning and build confidence in end of life care and support.
Role: Café volunteer
Responsible to: Catering manager
Accountable to: Head of volunteering, learning and inclusion
Hours: 4 hours per week. Monday to Saturday 11:30am – 2:30pm
Prospect Hospice’s vision is of a community where death is no longer a taboo, and everyone lives and dies well. We provide excellent, personalised, and compassionate care for everyone in our community who is affected by a life-limiting illness. We work in close partnership with other organisations – and specifically with local health and social care professionals – to ensure that anyone can access the best possible care whenever and wherever they need it, and we do so completely free of charge.
Description of role:
The Heart of the Hospice Café really is just that, the heart of the hospice. It’s a warm, welcoming space serving delicious hot and cold meals and the all-important cup of tea! The café is open to patients, families, visitors, general public and staff every day of the week. Our café volunteers keep the heart functioning and bring a warm, welcoming smile to all who visit. Having exceptional customer service skills, coupled with great communications skills, you’ll display a professional and caring nature at all times. As a café volunteer you’ll be an important ambassador for Prospect Hospice.
Role responsibilities:
As a volunteer in the café, you’ll make sure everyone who visits leaves feeling content. You’ll have either served them a hot meal that has been freshly made in the kitchen, something cold from the fridge or one of the many lovely cakes available. You and your volunteer colleague will be responsible for managing either the breakfast or lunch service, from serving the meals, taking payments, monitoring the till operation, and keeping the café area clean and tidy.
On occasions, we cater for special events both at the hospice and off-site. These events can be in the evenings and at weekends and generate vital funds for the hospice. Being able to support us with these events would be incredibly helpful.
Everyone at Prospect Hospice works to a set of core values – we are authentic, specialist, person-centred, inclusive, resilient and pursue excellence.
How we bring our values to life every day:
Keeping you safe:
Every volunteer role is risk assessed to ensure you and the people you come into contact with are kept safe, and the person overseeing your role will help you to familiarise yourself with the risk assessment for your specific role before undertaking activities. Alongside this, you’ll need to complete some mandatory training before fully starting your new role. Your safety and wellbeing is important to us, and we ask that you let us know if anything doesn’t feel right at any time.
In some roles you may be given a uniform you’ll need to wear, but we will make sure we let you know about that before you join the team.
Additionally, you can claim out of pocket expenses incurred travelling to your location on submission of a claim form and receipts. The person overseeing your role will be able to talk you through how to do this.
Skills and Experiences:
· Enthusiastic
· Confident
· Empathetic
· Team player
· Able to respond appropriately to distressed people.
· Interpersonal skills
· Customer Service experience
· Organisational skills
· Ability to cope under pressure and be able to multi-task.
· Experience of working in a café environment
· Experience of till operations (training will be given)
· Willingness to learn.
· Ability to take direction.
· Understanding the importance of boundaries with patients and families.
· Available to volunteer weekly
Our promise to you:
Our volunteers are so important to us, quite simply we would not be able to do what we do without you. In return for your valuable time, we commit to making sure you are well supported in your role. We will ensure you receive a thorough induction and training. We run a series of events to thank you for your contribution, and volunteers have access to a range of benefits (subject to availability), thanks to the generosity of some of our local businesses. The person overseeing your role is available to support you and answer any questions you may have day to day and they will also provide regular catch-up sessions to review your activities, ensure you and the patient(s) you are supporting remain safe, and provide development as appropriate. For concerns relating to your volunteering experience, the Voluntary Services team is always available.