Befriending project worker jobs
Project Worker 2 - Volunteer Co-ordinator (Maternity cover)
Are you looking for a new challenge?
Would you like to join our exciting and innovative Barnardo's Swansea Bloom Service working with young people who are care experienced as they make the transition to independence?
About the Bloom Service
Barnardo's Swansea Bloom Service works directly with care experienced young people to help improve their emotional wellbeing, resilience and self confidence. Our aim is to create a positive space for them to explore their identity, passions, and potential. The support on offer includes the opportunity to take part in amazing activities, life coaching, befriending and peer mentoring.
This is an exciting opportunity for a highly motivated individual to join Barnardo's as a Volunteer, Befriending and Peer Mentoring Co-ordinator (Project Worker 2).
The contract is for 25 hours a week to cover the maternity leave of the substantive post holder until 31st March 2025.
Bloom is a growing service offering a unique opportunity for the right person to develop, co-ordinate and deliver our Volunteer, Befriending and Peer Mentoring work using established and innovative approaches. The Co-ordinator will be responsible for recruiting and managing a team of volunteers, befrienders and peer mentors who will help young people to improve their physical and mental well-being by supporting them to access a range of exciting activities, helping them to find new interests and hobbies and engage in healthy activities in the community
You will undertake the role of Volunteer, Befriending and Peer Mentoring Co-ordinator reporting to the Children's Service Manager and acting as line manager to the service's volunteers.
The successful candidate will be required to carry out the following duties (in addition to those on the generic job description):-
- Continued development and delivery of the Volunteer, Befriending and Peer Mentoring element of the Bloom service.
- Recruit and train volunteers, befrienders and peer mentors
- Effectively match volunteers/befrienders/peer mentors to support young people
- Effectively utilise the Barnardo's specialist volunteer management system (Vol 1)
- Provide ongoing support and supervision of volunteers
- Keep accurate statistical information and assist in producing service performance reports for the organisation and funders.
- Support project engagement events and empower young people to share their voice and ensure that Bloom continues to be a young person led project
- Assist in quality assurance of every aspect of the service
- The service requires flexibility of work as we support young people around their needs.
You will have:
- Experience of working within a volunteering setting preferably at the level of co-ordinating the service this can be in a employment, education, training or volunteering setting
- Experience of recruiting, inducting and retaining volunteers
- Experience of keeping statistical information and completing performance reports for funders
- The ability to line manage volunteers
- An understanding of the needs of care experienced/vulnerable young people and an awareness of the factors impacting on their lives
Bloom is made up of three elements all of which work together:
Life Coaching - there is a dedicated life coach
Giving young people the power to unlock their own potential for positive change, by providing them with the tools to build resilience, improve wellbeing and understand themselves better. Coaching empowers young people to think about and move forward positively in their lives, by creating and working towards specific goals through 1:1 sessions with our life coach.
Volunteer, befriending and peer mentoring - there is a dedicated volunteer coordinator
- Volunteers – to help with activities
- Befriending - members of the local community befriend and provide ongoing assistance to service users are moving to independence
- Peer mentors – care experienced adults who can offer invaluable guidance to care experienced young people by drawing on their own experiences
Activities there are 2 engagement workers
Giving young people regular opportunities to get together to experience activities not easily accessed by care experienced young people. Led by the expressed wishes of young people they could be experiences such as sports, adventuring, outdoor events, gardening clubs, cooking clubs.
Additional Information:
You must have the ability to travel independently to meet the requirements of the post.
You must demonstrate in your application that you currently use the skills outlined above, and in the Job Description/Person Specifications, or have used them previously in employment, education, training, volunteering etc.
This contract is for 25 hours a week to cover the maternity leave of the substantive post holder until 31st March 2026 .
Your main office base will be at Barnardo's Swansea, Heol Cadifor, Penlan, Swansea but you will be expected to work out and about in Swansea and Neath.
When completing your application please refer to your skills knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification, Job Description and Additional Information document. This should be done with an understanding of the context of the service described.
Need more information?
If you require any further information about this opportunity, please contact Christine Parry (email address can be found via the job vacancy link on our website).
Please note due to the high volume of applications for some posts, this advert might close before the displayed closing date. We recommend that you apply for this role as soon as possible.
Pay & Reward Framework
We know that our colleagues go above and beyond in delivering our vital work, driven by their passion and commitment to Barnardo's values. We also know that we can only realise our ambitions and achieve better outcomes for more children, thanks to the talent, hard work and creativity of our people.
For all these reasons, we are committed to a new approach to pay and reward, to ensure it is fair, attractive and progressive, which was rolled out in April 2023. This is a positive change for the charity, and a part of our People & Culture Strategy. It will assist us in supporting colleagues to belong, thrive and grow in their colleague journey at Barnardo's and in time will offer clear routes of progression for colleagues in both their career and their pay.
Whilst the full pay band and salary range is advertised, our approach to starting salaries is to appoint between the minimum to mid-point of the pay band – this ensures that pay steps are available to reward our colleagues annually based on their contribution to excellence and alignment to our values and behaviours. More details on Barnardo's pay framework can be found upon application.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
Project Background
Come and join our award-winning place-based volunteering programme that works with residents living across Hackney and the City of London.
You will be based out in the community - the programme is based at GP practices - to engage, support and enable local residents and patients to deliver local services for themselves, to meet local needs. We support residents to come together, to share their skills and experience for the benefit of each other, to deliver local groups and activities such as a book group, film club, exercise classes or cooking group. Residents from diverse backgrounds and demographics attend these activities together and make new connections, building strong local communities, all working together to make their area a better place to live. People, many of whom are isolated across all ages, and who have difficult life circumstances, are brought together, providing each other with mutual support and encouragement to develop new skills and pursue life goals, and to feel better able to voice their concerns to services.
You will be joining a nationally recognised project - having won an award from the Royal Society of Public Health in November 2024 - to support residents to fulfil their personal goals, make connections with others, and design activities and services that meet local needs. You will also be supporting people to improve their mental and physical health through signposting them to appropriate services and encouraging them to talk to their GP if they have concerns; and will be working in partnership with GP practice staff to co-create volunteer roles to make the practice more efficient and a better place to visit.
Who are we?
Volunteer Centre Hackney is a medium sized charity (currently 30 staff) based in the London borough of Hackney, working to support local residents to realise their skills and passions through volunteering and social action, and to share these for the benefit of others.
Our mission is to build and strengthen communities across Hackney through supporting residents of all ages and backgrounds to volunteer and build projects together.
In 2021, we were awarded the Freedom of the Borough Award by Hackney Council for our efforts to support residents during COVID, which included mobilising over 2000 volunteers to deliver food, prescriptions and essential items, provide emotional support to isolated residents and support the vaccine rollout.
We work with hundreds of diverse community organisations and deliver various programmes to help residents share their skills and deliver their own social action projects to improve people’s lives. These include a befriending programme, volunteering brokerage matching local people to volunteer roles based on their skills, interests and goals, a specialist mental health programme, peer research and multiple resident engagement programmes at GP surgeries and estates across Hackney.
Post holders need to be enthusiastic and engaging, bringing energy to the role, be self-motivating and confident to work primarily alone, albeit with some support from the team members based at other sites.
We’ve been inspiring, developing, and supporting communities since 1997. We’re here to help you make a difference as a volunteer.




Actively Interviewing
This organisation is scheduling interviews as applications come in. They're ready to hire as soon as they find the right person. Don't miss your opportunity, apply now!
Farm Cornwall Trustees are seeking applications for the post of Charity Manager.
This is an exciting new role with an expansive remit ranging from dealing with calls and administration on one hand to strategic initiatives including the sourcing of funding; developing the new website and social media to reflect the new ambitions and activities of the charity and the creation of effective databases to evidence the impact of the charity on farming beneficiaries. This role is both ‘hands-on’ and strategic enabling the successful candidate to put their stamp and personality as the ‘backbone’ of the charity on its future development.
This is neither an administrative role nor a strategic role but a unique one which encompasses activities across that spectrum and involves both of these skills.
The statement from Richard Thomas, Chair of Trustees, stresses the importance of this new role.
The attached leaflet ‘Charity Manager Recruitment brochure’ gives further details of the charity and its support for the wider farming community in Cornwall and Isles of Scilly.
We would be delighted to hear from you if you believe you have the skills, personality and experiences to make this new role a great success.
Please send your CV, an accompanying letter explaining how you believe you can contribute to making
this new role successful and the names of two references.
The closing date for applications is 30 May 2025 although Trustees may decide on an earlier closing date at their own discretion.
It is likely that interviews for shortlisted candidates will be held either at the Farm Cornwall office or an
alternative venue on commencing 16 June 2025.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.