Specialist support for volunteering

This role is part of the Community Renewal Lifting Neighbourhoods Together team. This
team brings together community workers and transformative caseworkers with specialist
knowledge of different ways to support people in deprived neighbourhoods - for example
welfare rights, employability, community food and health/mental health.

A five year grant from National Lottery Community Fund is core to enabling this team to
operate in a different methodology which is deeply aligned with Community Renewal
Trust's core approach and values as described above.

This role is a fixed term activity to:
- Recruit a cohort of additional volunteers to support activities and services in the
community.
- Ensure the best possible support is available to existing volunteers in the area to
consider their needs and aspirations.
- Create an effective volunteer recruitment, on-boarding and retention process and
increase knowledge in the team of these topics.
- Provide training and support training to volunteers in leading listening
conversations and holistic conversations.
- Learn from work in Walker to make good use of volunteers in a Lifting
Neighbourhoods Together approach and share this with the team.

OBJECTIVES

Specialist support for volunteering (approx. 55%)
Objectives:
- Take steps to create a strategy to engage community members and recruit them as
volunteers in their neighbourhood community.
- Create and co-deliver a training programme in listening conversation, health issues
in the community and/or holistic conversations that can better engage volunteers in
meeting community needs.
- Create good practice on-boarding processes for volunteers including paperwork,
identity/DBS checks, induction training, code of practice and recording their support
needs.
- Support volunteer retention including but not limited to arranging celebration,
appreciation and socialising events or similar.

Community Engagement and Relationships (approx. 15%)
Objectives:
- Identify, meeting with and seek to inspire community members towards
volunteering.
- Build and maintain relationships with community groups, community organisations
and services in the neighbourhood which are relevant to volunteering.
- Get involved in community engagement activities such as events to reach community
members that might want to be involved in volunteering.

Transformative casework with volunteers (approx. 20%)
Objectives:
- Support new or existing volunteers with transformative case work to inspire them
towards a much better life for themselves and support them to identify their
strengths and address their needs., Arrange and conduct effective learning visits and learning opportunities with the LNT
team in Walker and others with relevant experience of using volunteers in roles
closer to that of our LNT staff members.
- Learn about and share learning with the team about good practice in volunteer
recruitment, on-boarding and retention.

Personal and Professional Development
Demonstrating a track record of continuous learning and personal/professional development
is a requirement of this role and evidencing that this is being actively progressed must be
presented at every appraisal. The post holder has responsibility to actively participate in
sessions organised by the organisation including training in compliance/regulatory processes
and meetings in which learning, and improvement are discussed for the purposes of quality
management. The post holder is responsible for collecting feedback from people they support
both to demonstrate their own strengths and to understand how to improve what they do. This
evidence of both types of feedback about their work is required for every appraisal.

Key professional development of particular relevance to this role includes:

• Volunteer management


Additional temporary Responsibilities
Please note that changes to this subsection would not constitute a change in job
description

Essential
• Evidence of experience working with people in deprived communityieis

Experience or with complex needs

• Evidence of experience working with community groups or community

services providing volunteering

• Evidence of experience working in a volunteering environment, either

as a volunteer, or (ideally) managing volunteers.

• Evidence of experience trusted relationships within funders and third

sector partners.

Desirable
• Evidence of extensive experience recruiting and managing volunteers.

experience

Community Renewal Trust is a values-led, dynamic and innovative organisation at the
cutting-edge of work towards ending persistent poverty in Scotland. With 45 staff in three
neighbourhoods and running two social enterprises there is always lots of impact and
interesting learning.

Community Renewal works among deprived communities to develop, deliver and share
better approaches to proactively find the right people in the right places where
transformative and empowering work can make the most difference. These approaches
always place people and communities in the lead: listening to them, identifying their
strengths, supporting them on their terms, and building their capacity to flourish.

Community Renewal alleviates poverty by engaging and forming trusting relationships with
individuals, whole families and whole communities together then supporting them by
combining holistic case management (e.g. around income, work, health, wellness) with
community development (e.g. forming new community activities/groups). This work is about
testing change which can inform policy, be scaled up or replicated to achieve a much greater
impact than our direct delivery alone.

A set of core values guides all the work of Community Renewal:

• TRUSTING - Our impact is built on choosing to place trust in people.


• TRUSTWORTHY - Our trustworthiness is what makes our relationships grow.


• LEARNING - Our charity is about learning so we celebrate success but also appreciate

failure

• BUILDING ON STRENGTHS - Our aim is always to build on strengths: we reject

paternalism

• ALONGSIDE COMMUNITIES - Our aim is always to stay alongside people for as long as

it takes.

• ACHIEVING PREVENTION - Our choice is to be proactive so we can achieve prevention,

build resilience and find the right people at the right time.

• INSPIRING TRANSFORMATION - Our focus is always inspiring towards transformation,

rather than incremental change.