Community Support Worker 

Bournemouth / Poole / Christchurch – 3 days / 21 hours per week  (Specifically Tuesday / Thursday / Friday)

We are looking to recruit a dedicated, motivated, and energetic individual to join our team of Community Support Workers, providing help and support for visually impaired people in Dorset to maintain healthy, independent and socially active lives  in their local community.

This role will be to work specifically with our members through social clubs and activities and overseeing the volunteer recruitment and management process in BCP.

Working from home and spending a lot of your time out and about in the community, this is an exciting opportunity for someone to bring their skills and personality to the role and help shape and develop future services for our members.

So, if you are someone who can become passionate about wanting to help make a positive difference to the lives of blind and partially sighted people in Dorset and will  enjoy the satisfaction of knowing you are achieving that, then we really want to hear  from you.

Key duties include:

• Run several monthly social clubs in your given area with outings and activities
• Assess and react to the needs of our service users
• Actively promote all Dorset Blind Association services and promote the value of

our membership scheme

• Recruit, retain and support good quality and motivated volunteers
• Take over the management of volunteers already in your area
• Communicate regularly with all service users and volunteers
• Match and introduce volunteers to service users making each aware of good

practice guidelines

• Monitoring of the service and accurate record keeping and reporting
• Entering information on to web-based database (training will be provided)
• Attending community events and networking with other charities, agencies and

professionals

• Raising the profile of the Dorset Blind Association generally and acting as its

representative within the community

Person specification:

We are looking for someone with as many of the following skills and experience as  possible, although training, mentoring and ongoing support will be provided.

• Living in BCP area
• Happy working from home and out and about in the community
• Disciplined and organised and able to effectively and efficiently plan and

structure their own working day for maximum productivity.

• Motivated to work alone and to deadlines
• Able to work unsupervised, but keeping effective and regular contact with line

manager and colleagues

• Flexible and resourceful to meet the various and often changing needs of the

charity and our service users and to fit in with club activities and outings

• Outgoing personality and able to relate to and deal effectively with people on

many different levels

• Willing and able to act as an advocate and promote the charity to potential new

service users, volunteers and other supporters.

• A basic understanding of sight loss and other physical and mental health

disabilities.

• Experience of working with older people and those with a disability and

confident to help service users with mental health needs

• Experience of recruiting, working with and managing volunteers
• Good written and verbal communication skills and a good working knowledge of

MS Office

Salary: £16,020 (actual)

Access to own reliable transport is essential

An offer of employment will be subject to a satisfactory DBS check, receipt of two satisfactory references and the person appointed will serve a probationary period of six months.  Applications for this post can be made by sending your CV and a covering letter to Miss Leah Cross by email leah@dorsetblind.org.uk