Volunteer to Care Ward Support CCU West Cumberland HospitalinWhitehaveninWhitehavenPUBLISHED MON 24 MAR 2025

Volunteer to Career Ward Support CCU, West Cumberland Hospital, Whitehaven

Fancy a career in healthcare?

The Volunteer to Career programme enables you to complete essential mandatory training, complete 60 hours on the ward and an opportunity to complete your Care Certificate. On successful completion of this programme you will be interviewed to your our Bank register as a Casual Healthcare Assistant.

e programme is funded from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and this therefore only open to applicants who reside in the Cumberland Council boundary.

Who is eligible to apply for the VtC programme?The VtC programme is open to anyone who is interested in a career within Health and Social Care.

You must be 18 years old or over to volunteer on a ward.

What tasks can this role include?

• Assisting the Nutrition Coordinator to deliver the right meal to each patient. Making sure patients have everything they need once their meal is served. Offering companionship to patients who request this during their mealtime
• Helping patients with physical feeding and drinking when appropriate
• Help improve patient experience by providing a friendly welcome, emotional support and reassurance to patients and their families.
• Support the HCA's and Nurses with support on the ward i.e. replenishing drinks, sitting with patients
• Running errands for patients to purchase newspapers/magazines/snacks as required
• Assist with preparing patients for meals, and assisting with feeding patients
• Assist with serving meals
• Cutting up food, and opening packaging
• Collecting and tidying up following meal service
• Talking to patients, reading with or to patients, doing crosswords, playing dominoes etc

Location: Coronary Care Unit, West Cumberland Hospital

About us

Please see attached job description and person specification for further information regarding the role and the essential and desirable criteria required to be met by applicants.

Please note, due to changes implemented by the Government to the UK immigration policy, individuals who require a Health and Care Visa or a Skilled Worker Visa may no longer be eligible for sponsorship where the UKVI salary threshold is not met or if the occupation is not included in the updated Immigration Salary List (ISL). Applicants must check their eligibility to be employed in any role they are interested in applying for, prior to completing an application for employment.Any applicants who do not meet the eligibility criteria will not be progressed.

If you are applying under the Disability Confident Scheme or Armed Forces Covenant and you meet all the essential criteria for a post, you will be guaranteed an interview.

Relocation assistance may be available for successful applicants moving to the region for certain posts. Please see our Policy for eligible vacancies.

The Trust will provide a preceptorship period for all newly registered healthcare professionals.

Healthcare Professionals returning to practice, moving into new roles or changing clinical environments, may access an agreed preceptorship period.

• Please ensure that you document evidence of meeting all the essential criteria in the supporting information.
• If sufficient response is received this post could be closed earlier than the specified closing date, please apply as soon as possible to ensure that your application is considered.

Important Information

Candidates who have been successfully shortlisted for interview will be asked via an email notification to log on to their Trac account to select an interview time. This will usually be within 2 weeks of the closing date.

For candidates applying using a Hotmail account or have strict firewall settings please ensure the following:

• Junk Mail is checked regularly

Disclosure and Barring Service:

On 28 November 2020, the new Disclosure and Barring Service filtering rules will come into effect.

The changes mean that:

• youth cautions, reprimands and final warnings will no longer be subject to automatic disclosure
• the multiple conviction rule has been removed, meaning that if an individual has more than one conviction, regardless of offence type or time passed, each conviction will be considered against the remaining rules individually, rather than being automatically disclosed.

If you are unsure about whether you need to disclose certain criminal record information, free confidential advice may be sought from one of the charity bodies listed below. These bodies can advise you on what you are legally required to declare and may also be able to advise you on how you can disclose criminal record information to a prospective employer and your legal rights when doing so.