Mental health volunteer volunteer roles in london
We believe in the power of holidays to transform lives. Time away matters. For many families facing tough times -whether through financial hardship, illness or other challenges - a short break can feel out of reach. Yet, these moments of escape and connection are vital for well-being, resilience, and hope.
Our mission is simple but powerful: to provide families who wouldn’t otherwise get a break with the chance to spend quality time together, make memories, and return home stronger.
As a Trustee, you will play a crucial role in shaping our future. You’ll help guide our strategy, ensure we remain true to our values, and support us in reaching even more families who need our help. Your expertise, insight, and passion can help us grow and innovate, so that no family is left behind when it comes to the simple joy of time away together.
About our Trustee Team
Our Trustees are a team of volunteers who use their diverse skills, experiences, and perspectives to set the strategic direction of the charity and make sure it’s doing what it was set up to do in the best possible way.
Family Holiday Charity has an ambitious strategy over the next few years, which will see us expand our services to families, develop our influencing work within the travel and leisure industry and government, and evolve our ways of working so that we can accept and use gifted breaks, travel and other services at scale to give families who really need it a holiday.
To help us do all that we’ll need the guidance, challenge, connections, and support of all our Trustees.
Given our goals, we’re particularly looking to add the following professional skills and experiences to our team.
- Legal Expertise - Our Trustees have a duty to ensure the charity operates within the law and complies with regulatory responsibilities, including charity law, safeguarding and governance requirements. This may involve providing advice on legal risks and obligations, ensuring compliance with articles of association and relevant legislation, supporting decisions on contracts, partnerships, risk management and more.
- Family Charity leadership - the Charity's vision if that 'every family in the UK should have a holiday' and this bold statement reflects our belief that time away together is not a luxury but a lifeline. We're seeking experience from a family support base to help advocate for our beneficiaries needs and help us expand our reach.
- Influencing / Campaigning - We are seeking experience and ambition that will help us influence policy and industry practices through the development of relatinships with policymakers, travel and tourism industry and media etc. Also shape campaigns, raise awareness, drive systemic change and support advocacy strategies to remove barriers for families.
- Digital Transformation - We wish to evolve and develop our digital strategy and technology adoption. A key priority is to ensure our digital growth is considered and aligns with accessibility and security.
Your Skills and Contribution
You'll need:
- Strategic vision, independent judgement, and an ability to think creatively.
- A proactive attitude, willing to bring new ideas and perspectives to our Board, and confident about challenging decisions, where necessary, in the best interests of the charity.
- Willingness to understand and take on the duties and responsibilities of trusteeship.
- Commitment to the charity and our mission, and the ability to devote the necessary time and effort to do the role well.
The Commitment
We’ll ask you to participate in four two-hour Board Meetings per year, typically in person at our office in London or remotely.We also get together for a Strategy Day in September/October, which is held on a weekday in London, and you’d need to attend that in person.
We can support with any access needs for in-person meetings.,
There are two Board sub-committees- one which focuses on our Finances and Risk, and one which considers our people (Trustees and Staff). Once you’ve settled into the role, most Trustees join one of them. They meet remotely around four times a year.
Outside of formal meetings, you’ll be warmly encouraged to get to know the staff team, and attend fundraising events
or other events to meet referrers, families, and supporters wherever possible.
Overall, you’ll need to be able to commit around 6 hours each month for a mix of meetings and events, contributing
your skills and perspective to projects, building your knowledge of the charity and developing as a Trustee.
See the trustee pack for more information and for the application and interview process - click apply to see this. Please note the deadline has been extended to midnight on Sunday 4th January 2026 to ensure the professionals skills and areas of experience (as listed above) are captured.
Registered Charity
11 - 20
We help families get time away together, often for the first time ever, helping to create confidence and hope for the future.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
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With a goal to help transform lives, change attitudes and create a society that works for autistic people, the UK's leading autism charity, the National Autistic Society, is looking for three new Trustees to join the Board and help navigate their future challenges.
Applications close Monday 12th January
Who we are
The National Autistic Society (NAS) is the UK’s leading charity for autistic people and one of the country’s major charities, with a turnover of around £100 million. Since 1962, we’ve been transforming lives, changing attitudes and helping to create a society that works for autistic adults and children.
We are active across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and have a network of volunteer-run branches across the UK. As well as adult services and schools, we run a range of programmes, have dedicated diagnostic services and run specialist helplines. We also work closely with businesses, local authorities and the government to help them provide more autism-friendly spaces, deliver better services and improve laws. And we improve public understanding of autism and the difficulties many autistic people face.
We’re continuing to advocate on longstanding issues such as social care funding and campaign for what autistic people need to see in the forthcoming autism strategy in England and its equivalent in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. We’re also growing our branch network – including national online branches – and we are working on a new mental health programme combining research, digital guidance and policy influencing.
This is a truly transformational and vital time to be part of our Charity. We are in the latter stages of our Vision to Reality Strategy for 2023-2026, which sets out the role of NAS in creating a society that works for autistic people.
We’re proud of what we’ve achieved – but there’s always more to be done. As the economic, social and political landscape changes, our strategy must evolve to reflect changes. We need to ensure we continue to increase our fundraising and commercial activities to deliver the scale of impact required.
We’re looking for three new Trustees to join our Board to help us navigate future challenges.
Who we are looking for
- Our Schools Governance Group
We are also looking for two Trustees to join our School Governance Group, one who will chair the committee and one who will be a member of the committee. Our family of schools includes our four independent specialist schools, supporting children and young people from the age of 4 to 22. We aim to make sure we are continually challenging our schools, keeping everyone safe, monitoring their progress and getting the best possible outcomes for all of our pupils in all of our schools.
Previously, we carried out a review of the local governance arrangements of our schools. Historically, the independent schools in NAS were governed locally by an LGB, which brought excellent opportunities for partnership working; however, as time went on, we required a model that would ensure consistency of challenge, support and monitoring across all our schools. We have amended our LGBs locally; the groups focus on partnership working, whilst the strategic direction, development, challenge and support for the executive, assurance and governance sits firmly with our Schools Governance Group as a sub-committee of the trustee board.
Our new Chair of the Schools Governance Group will have strong knowledge and experience of schools, school governance, the DfE and Ofsted and be a senior leader with experience in education and special educational needs. The new Chair of the committee will work closely with our Director of Education and Children’s Services, Chief Executive, Chair of the Board, Chair of the Independent Safeguarding Committee and our Trustee with safeguarding expertise.
The additional member of this committee will be someone who brings strong experience and insight in Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and safeguarding. Your expertise will play a vital role in ensuring that our culture and decision-making processes fully reflect best practice in supporting children and young people with SEND, and in maintaining the highest standards of safety and well-being across our organisation.
- Chair of Quality & Assurance Committee
Our current Chair of the Quality and Assurance Committee will shortly be completing their term and we seek a successor with a strong background in adult social care and safeguarding, as well as a solid understanding of commissioning.
This is an opportunity for someone who can offer both constructive challenge and thoughtful support — a person who brings insight, curiosity and a balanced perspective to complex discussions. The ideal candidate will combine strategic oversight with a collaborative and compassionate approach, helping to ensure that quality, safety and continuous improvement remain at the heart of our work. They will be confident in asking the right questions, guiding reflective debate and fostering a culture of openness and accountability across the Committee and the wider organisation.
We’re looking for people who can provide strategic direction, appropriate oversight, scrutiny, challenge, leadership and passion to support our development.
We’re keen to ensure our Board is diverse in every way and we’re committed to ensuring our Trustees reflect our society, our Charity and the people we represent and support. We welcome applications from autistic people, their families and carers. To achieve greater diversity, we’re actively encouraging applications from people of all backgrounds and regions. We can work with you to make reasonable adjustments to ensure you contribute fully to being a member of our Board. Our Pioneer project is focused on ensuring our organisation is an exemplary employer of autistic people. This also extends to our Board.
- Time Commitment
The National Autistic Society Board meets four times, with one overnight strategy away day every year. Our meetings are a blend of face-to-face and virtual meetings. Our Trustees with education experience will join our School Governance Group, which meets quarterly, usually online. Our Quality & Assurance Committee also meets quarterly. We expect the overall time commitment to be approximately one day per month, including reading board papers, ad hoc conversations with board members and the executive and the opportunity throughout the year to visit our services and schools, as well as represent NAS at events.
Please click 'Redirect to recruiter’ to be redirected to the Peridot Partners website, where you can find full details of the candidate profile and register your interest to apply.
Applications for this role close Monday 12th January.
Recruitment Agency
21 - 50
We’re an executive search firm working across third sector, education and membership sectors to transform leadership and inspire change.
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Carers UK is the national membership charity for the millions of people in the UK who are unpaid carers. As an organisation we provide expert advice and information for carers, campaign for greater recognition and support for carers, and use our experience and expertise to help other organisations do more for carers. Our Board of Trustees plays a vital leadership role in the work we do while ensuring the charity is equipped and governed effectively, establishing and monitoring strategy and ensuring we are true to our values and keep carers at the heart of everything we do.
We are now seeking to appoint up to four people to join our Board of Trustees, to steer us towards our vision of a world where carers are recognised, valued and supported.
It’s an exciting time to be part of Carers UK, as we launch our new strategic review in 2026. Our Board is instrumental in ensuring we make the future really impactful for carers through our vision and strategy while fulfilling all our obligations as a charity.
We are also seeking to appoint a Nations Trustee for Scotland. In addition to the general responsibilities of a trustee, the Nations Trustee will be expected to ensure that the Carers UK Board is informed on key issues affecting carers in their Nation.
To find out more about this opportunity and apply, please download the Trustee recruitment pack from our website
Carers UK is committed to representing the diverse society in which we work and actively encourages applications from people with current or recent experience of caring from all backgrounds and experiences.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
Thank you!
Looking for an exciting opportunity to make a tangible difference in the lives of Londoners affected by homelessness, while contributing your professional insights to a forward-thinking and compassionate organisation? Why not join us as our Audit Committee Chair or as a Trustee!
About Evolve Housing + Support
At Evolve, we believe everyone deserves the opportunity to live a safe, fulfilled and independent life. We provide support in London, offering tailored programmes to meet people’s individual needs; including housing, employment and skills training, mentoring and counselling.
We do this through our work with young parents and children at risk of exclusion to build the skills and resilience that can help prevent homelessness, campaigning to end street homelessness, and building affordable homes to help people move on to an independent life.
Our company culture: the heart of what we do
We’re proud of our inclusive culture – one where everyone’s voice matters, and where diversity of background, thought and experience helps us make better decisions for the communities we serve. Our mission - to help children, young people and adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness reach their potential, and move on to live happy, fulfilled lives. We ensure our values - Honest, Inclusive, Optimistic, Determined, Passionate & Creative inform everything we do.
The opportunities to join us
At Evolve Housing + Support, we are championing opportunity, dignity and independence for people affected by homelessness – a cause that may resonate with you and encourage you to lend your strategic oversight and financial skills to our Board.
We are looking for a new Audit Committee Chair and two Trustees to join our Board and play a key role in shaping our governance and strategic direction.
As our Audit Committee Chair, you’ll ensure we maintain the highest standards of financial stewardship, carry out all our affairs effectively under all regulatory bodies, while keeping our mission and values at the heart of decision-making through your leadership.
The Trustee roles present the opportunity to play a crucial part in the successful running of our organisation, in partnership with the leadership team, upholding excellent governance using your professional skills.
Who are we looking for?
We are particularly interested in speaking with people who are able to lead and inspire, who also have the strategic and analytical thinking skills to lead through periods of change, and who can communicate effectively with a wide range of stakeholders and audiences.
You’ll need to have the ability to proactively support the values of Evolve Housing + Support, have a strong understanding of good governance practice along with a financial or HR background at a professional level, and a strong track record in a relevant sector, with empathy for our core customer group.
Don’t think you quite meet all of the specifications? Please don’t count yourself out – we’d still love to hear from you and learn more about you and your interest in joining Evolve!
Sounding good? Here’s how you can apply today!
Please read the Candidate Information Pack for more information before you apply.
How to Apply:
Eastside People is supporting Evolve Housing + Support in the recruitment of these roles. Please apply by submitting your CV and a cover letter, both in Word doc format.
Please use the cover letter (max 2 pages) as an opportunity to add to the information you have shared in your CV and ensure that you cover the following:
- Why are you interested in the Chair/Trustee role at Evolve Housing + Support?
- Having read the information pack, what relevant experience and skills do you feel you would bring to this role?
We want you to have every opportunity to demonstrate your skills, ability and potential. If you have a disability or require reasonable adjustments during the application or interview process, please contact us so we can support you appropriately.
The closing date for applications is Mon 22 Dec 2025. Shortlisting interviews will take place shortly after and shortlisted candidates will have an interview with Evolve during the week beginning 12 January 2026.
We look forward to hearing from you!
