Volunteering

We welcome volunteers from all backgrounds and provide reasonable adjustments for individuals with disabilities or additional needs. We want our volunteers to reflect the diversity of the people we support and welcome applications from individuals across all the communities we serve. Volunteers, like all people in the NHS workforce, are required to undertake recruitment checks, which include:

• right to work in the UK
• Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks
• occupational health
• appropriate references

Please note that having something on your DBS does not automatically stop you volunteering - the Trust simply completes a risk assessment.

You’ll start by looking at volunteering opportunities available. When we have a vacancy, we list it here on our website.  When you find a role you like, you’ll complete a short application form, which you can download to apply. Pay particular attention to the requirements for the role. Once your application has been reviewed, you may be invited for an informal chat or interview to help us get to know you.

To keep everyone safe, all volunteers complete standard pre-volunteering checks outlined in the previous ‘Who can volunteer?’ section before starting. Our team can support and guide you through the recruitment process to complete these requirements.     

A volunteer role description will be available for you to review before completing your application form. This outlines duties, boundaries and requirements of the role you are applying for. A volunteer role enhances (but does not replace) paid staff.

At GMMH, we are committed to providing you with the required training, induction and support to enable you to work safely in an NHS environment as a volunteer. A named member of staff will be identified to support and supervise you. This helps ensure the volunteering experience is meaningful for you and supports safe practice for all, as our service users are often vulnerable adults and children. 

Once you have returned your completed application form to the contact detailed in the advertisement by the closing date, the process can generally take six to eight weeks, but sometimes longer. This includes time to receive clearance from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), health checks and appropriate references. Before you start, you’ll complete some essential training and sign your Volunteer Agreement – which is a shared understanding of what you can expect from GMMH and what the Trust expects from you.

Service: Achieve Drug & Alcohol Treatment & Recovery Service

Location: Achieve Sites in Bury, Salford and/or Trafford

Supervisor: Jill Siddle

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Role Purpose

 To use your own lived experience, to offer harm reduction interventions, support and advocacy to substance users accessing the Needle and Syringe Exchange. To encourage those not already accessing, to engage with structured treatment and recovery options. To work under the direction of the Harm Reduction Lead.

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Key Responsibilities

Professional Responsibilities & Support

• Develop harm reduction interventions: Promote engagement under the direction of the Harm reduction Lead or clinical team.
• Carry out harm reduction equipment exchanges: Offer harm reduction interventions, support, and advocacy to substance users accessing or seeking to access substance use services
• Deliver recovery interventions: Assist GMMH staff in the community, including joint home visits.
• Organise service activities: Encourage service user / community member suggestions and help put their ideas into practice.
• Access community resources: Assist and encourage service users to utilize outside support.
• Manage new referrals: Gather information both face-to-face and over the phone.
• Publicise recovery opportunities: Support colleagues and liaise with external agencies regarding access criteria.
• Deliver information sessions: Support and facilitate presentations as required. 

  Clinical Safety & Risk Management

  Practice safe working: Follow community procedures and alert relevant authorities when required.

• Report concerns immediately: Escalate any potential risks directly to a GMMH colleague.
• Minimise lifestyle risks: Support service users to adopt safer practices and healthier habits.
• Staff needle exchanges: Maintain sufficient stock levels and identify when to reorder supplies.
• Manage healthcare referrals: Connect users to primary and secondary care for health problems and blood-borne viruses.
• Tailor vulnerable support: Enable high-risk users to attend appointments and interventions.

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Person Specification (Requirements for the Role)

Essential Criteria and Experience

• Lived experience: Possess personal experience of the effects of substance use.
• Support experience: Provide previous support to vulnerable or socially excluded individuals.
• Core values: Demonstrate respect, compassion, dignity, and a commitment to equal opportunities.
• Communication skills: Possess strong interpersonal and communication abilities.
• Teamwork: Work collaboratively and effectively as part of a team.

  Knowledge and Understandings

• Recovery process: Understand how to motivate and encourage service users through recovery.
• Professional boundaries: Maintain clear boundaries, confidentiality, and proper information sharing.
• Safeguarding: Comprehend basic safeguarding protocols for vulnerable adults and children.
• Digital literacy: Utilise basic IT skills, including email and online platforms.

  Mandatory Training and Development

• Peer training: Complete the GMMH Level 2 Peer Worker training course.
• Core compliance: Finish all mandatory training within 4 weeks of starting.
• Onboarding: Complete the local induction and any role-specific training.
• Specialised training: Complete or show willingness to take harm reduction and group work facilitation training.

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If you are interested in applying for this voluntary role, please complete the application form in the link below and email it to: Jill.Siddle@gmmh.nhs.uk

https://www.gmmh.nhs.uk/download.cfm?doc=docm93jijm4n10672.docx&ver=13755  

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This role description reflects the role at the present time and should not be regarded as exclusive or exhaustive.

Please note: We strongly recommend that you check with the Benefits Agency that your commitment to volunteering does not penalise you in any way and does not affect your benefits. 

This role is unpaid, however, we will refund all travel expenses for training and volunteering in line with Trust Policy.

Role: Volunteer Carer Peer Mentor - Group Co-Facilitator

Service: Salford Early Intervention Team

Location: Wesley St, Salford

Supervisor: Rosie Mentiplay

 

Role Summary/Purpose

GMMH Salford Early Intervention Team work with people aged between 14 and 65 who have experienced a first episode of psychosis.

Each team has a range of roles to support service users and their families, including nurses, social workers, support workers, psychologists and psychiatrists.  An exciting opportunity has arisen to embed Volunteer Carer Peer Mentors into these diverse teams. 

  It is part of the NHS 10 Year Long Term Plan to integrate people with lived experience of mental health difficulties themselves into the workforce.  This includes people with lived experience of caring for somebody with mental health (including dementia) and/or addiction difficulties.

Carers, family/friends of our service users tell us that they would welcome support from someone who has experience of what they are going through in order to help them increase their resilience, develop support networks and to continue caring. 

Please see below the requirements that you must be able to meet in order to apply for this role.

 

Main Duties & Responsibilities:

Thank you for your interest in this role. As part of the role we require you to:

·       Be available for at least 2 hours per week (hours are negotiable as this is a volunteer role but for continuity, we would ask for a weekly commitment)

·       Co-facilitate a group for service users and carers using your own lived experience of being a carer of somebody with mental health difficulties

·       Attend and complete our in-house Level 2 Award in Peer Mentorship (8 weeks, 1 day per week)

·       To respect individual’s rights to choose the interventions/support networks that will help and support them in their own caring journey

·       To support people in these interventions via a group-based activity.

·       To comply with all Trust policies and procedures but in particular in relation to safeguarding vulnerable adults and children, and information sharing

·       To work as part of the Salford Early Intervention Team and receive and share information within that team in order to safeguard individuals and support them to work towards their goals

Requirements for the Role:

 

In order to fulfil the duties of this role we ask that you:

 

·       Have your own lived experience of being a carer of somebody with mental health difficulties.

·       Can commit to at least 2 hours per week as a volunteer

·       Can commit to the Level 2 Award in Peer Mentorship

·       Have a basic understanding of safeguarding vulnerable adults and children

·       Have a basic understanding of confidentiality and information sharing legislation

·       Have a basic understanding of professional boundaries

·       Have respect and compassion for others and their right to choose and to be treated with dignity

·       Have good communication skills

·       Be willing to work as part of a team

This role description reflects the role at the present time and should not be regarded as exclusive or exhaustive.

 

If you would like to apply for this voluntary role please complete the email below and email it to Rose Mentiplay:

Rose.Mentiplay@gmmh.nhs.uk

https://www.gmmh.nhs.uk/download.cfm?doc=docm93jijm4n10672.docx&ver=13755

 

Please note: we strongly recommend that you check with the Benefits Agency that your commitment to volunteering does not penalise you in any way and does not affect your benefits.

This role is unpaid, however, we will refund all travel expenses for training and volunteering in line with Trust Policy.

Role: Volunteer Peer Mentor - Group Co-Facilitator

Service: Salford Early Intervention Team

Location: Wesley St, Salford

Supervisor: Rosie Mentiplay

 

Role Summary/Purpose

GMMH’s Early Intervention Teams are there to support people experiencing their first episode of psychosis.  Each team has a range of roles to support service users and their families, including nurses, social workers, support workers, psychologists and psychiatrists.  An exciting opportunity has arisen to embed Volunteer Peer Mentors into these diverse teams.  It is part of the national NHS Long Term Plan to integrate people with lived experience of mental health difficulties themselves into the workforce.  Our service users tell us that they would welcome support from someone who has experience of what they are going through in order to help them in their recovery journey.  We have feedback from service users and Volunteer Peer Mentors in other services that tells us that creating this connection between peers offers people hope, aspiration and motivation.

Please see below the requirements that you must be able to meet in order to apply for this role.

 

Main Duties & Responsibilities:

·       Be available for at least two hours per week.

·       Use your own lived experience of mental health difficulties and working with Early Intervention Teams in your own recovery to enrich your relationship with service users and mentor them within a group setting.

·       Attend and complete our in-house Level 2 Award in Peer Mentorship

·       To respect individual’s rights to choose the interventions that will help and support them in their own recovery journey

·       To co-facilitate a group for service users and carers.

·       To comply with all Trust policies and procedures but in particular in relation to safeguarding vulnerable adults and children, and information sharing

·       To work as part of the Early Intervention Multi Disciplinary Team and receive and share information within that team in order to safeguard individuals and support them to work towards their goals.

 

Requirements for the Role:

  In order to fulfil the duties of this role we ask that you:  

·       Have your own lived experience of being a carer of somebody with mental health difficulties.

·       Can commit to at least 2 hours per week as a volunteer

·       Can commit to the Level 2 Award in Peer Mentorship

·       Have a basic understanding of safeguarding vulnerable adults and children

·       Have a basic understanding of confidentiality and information sharing legislation

·       Have a basic understanding of professional boundaries

·       Have respect and compassion for others and their right to choose and to be treated with dignity

·       Have good communication skills

·       Be willing to work as part of a team

This role description reflects the role at the present time and should not be regarded as exclusive or exhaustive.

 

If you would like to apply for this voluntary role please complete the email below and email it to Rose Mentiplay:

Rose.Mentiplay@gmmh.nhs.uk

https://www.gmmh.nhs.uk/download.cfm?doc=docm93jijm4n10672.docx&ver=13755

 

Please note: we strongly recommend that you check with the Benefits Agency that your commitment to volunteering does not penalise you in any way and does not affect your benefits.

This role is unpaid, however, we will refund all travel expenses for training and volunteering in line with Trust Policy.

Service:  Achieve Drug & Alcohol Treatment & Recovery Service

Location: Achieve Sites in Bury and/or Trafford (Community and Online)

Supervisor: Ross Darbyshire

 

Role Purpose

To use your own lived experience to support, motivate, and encourage service users through their recovery journey, working safely within a clinical community team. 

 

Key Responsibilities

Professional Responsibilities & Support

• Develop recovery skills:  Promote engagement under the direction of a Recovery Coordinator or clinical team.
• Deliver recovery interventions:  Assist GMMH staff in the community, including joint home visits.
• Organise service activities:  Encourage user suggestions and help put their ideas into practice.
• Access community resources:  Assist and encourage service users to utilize outside support.
• Manage new referrals:  Gather information both face-to-face and over the phone.
• Publicise recovery opportunities:  Support colleagues and liaise with external agencies regarding access criteria.
• Deliver information sessions:  Support and facilitate presentations as required.
• Promote family involvement:  Actively encourage service user, family, and carer input in planning.  

Clinical Safety & Risk Management

• Practice safe working:  Follow community procedures and alert relevant authorities when required.
• Report concerns immediately:  Escalate any potential risks directly to a GMMH colleague.
• Minimise lifestyle risks:  Support service users to adopt safer practices and healthier habits.
• Staff needle exchanges:  Maintain sufficient stock levels and identify when to reorder supplies.
• Manage healthcare referrals:  Connect users to primary and secondary care for health problems and blood-borne viruses.
• Tailor vulnerable support:  Enable high-risk users to attend appointments and interventions.

 

Person Specification (Requirements for the Role)

Essential Criteria & Experience    

• Lived experience:   Possess personal experience of the effects of substance use.
• Support experience:   Provide previous support to vulnerable or socially excluded individuals.
• Core values:   Demonstrate respect, compassion, dignity, and a commitment to equal opportunities.
• Communication skills:   Possess strong interpersonal and communication abilities.
• Teamwork:   Work collaboratively and effectively as part of a team.

Knowledge & Understandings

• Recovery process:   Understand how to motivate and encourage service users through recovery.
• Professional boundaries:   Maintain clear boundaries, confidentiality, and proper information sharing.
• Safeguarding:   Comprehend basic safeguarding protocols for vulnerable adults and children.
• Digital literacy:   Utilise basic IT skills, including email and online platforms.

Mandatory Training & Development

• Peer training:   Complete the GMMH Level 2 Peer Worker training course.
• Core compliance:   Finish all mandatory training within 4 weeks of starting.
• Onboarding:   Complete the local induction and any role-specific training.
• Specialised training:   Complete or show willingness to take harm reduction and group work facilitation training.

    

If you are interested in applying for this voluntary role, please complete the application form in the link below and email it to:  Ross.Darbyshire@gmmh.nhs.uk

https://www.gmmh.nhs.uk/download.cfm?doc=docm93jijm4n10672.docx&ver=13755 

 

This role description reflects the role at the present time and should not be regarded as exclusive or exhaustive. 

Please note: we strongly recommend that you check with the Benefits Agency that your commitment to volunteering does not penalise you in any way and does not affect your benefits.

This role is unpaid, however, we will refund all travel expenses for training and volunteering in line with Trust Policy.