Volunteer

What volunteering may involve and how to apply?
Can you spare an hour or two per week – MAXIMUM?
Are you over 18?
Are you a car driver?

  • How would you deal with your mail if you couldn’t see it?
  • How would you correspond with your friends, pay your bills and fill in forms if you were unable to write?
  • How do you go shopping if you cannot see what is for sale?

What volunteers do
Our volunteers provide a range of services to help people resolve some of the issues listed above.

We would never ask a volunteer to do any work that they are not comfortable with.

Different volunteers can help in different ways.

Most of our volunteers work as a Reader, visiting a service user in their own home, to provide whatever help with reading and writing that the service user requires. Sometimes this also includes ‘social’ reading, maybe a magazine or book that the Service User cannot access in another form.

A lot of volunteers also take part in our ‘Shop and See’ service, collecting the service user from their home, taking them shopping while acting as guide and eyes to help them make their purchases. Some of our service users ask for help shopping on a regular basis, while others may request occasional help, perhaps to choose clothes or gifts.

Volunteers who help with our Facilitation Service enable users to participate in educational and cultural activities outside the home. They provide assistance tailored to the needs of the service user and the occasion.

We also train some volunteers in the use of our recording equipment so that they can help with our Transcription service.