Volunteers

When a child or young person is poorly and needs to come into Birmingham Children’s Hospital for treatment, this can be one of the most stressful and testing times for their family and friends. Having people around who can offer support, read stories for children, show new families around or give them directions to places to go and eat, can make all the difference to the experience those families receive.

That’s why volunteers are so important to us.

• The mum and dad who need to take and break and go and get a coffee rely on the volunteer to keep their child company for half-an-hour.
• The member of staff who needs to concentrate on providing clinical care can rely upon the volunteer to play with groups of children in the play area on the ward.
• The young child who has had a serious operation can smile for the first time because a volunteer has taken a moment to tell a joke or pull a funny face.

People from all walks of life come forward wanting to volunteer in our hospital, often with different motivations – you may have seen a loved one cared for in the hospital; you may have relied on our care when you were young; or you may just want to give something back to your community and think helping out in the hospital is a really worthwhile thing to do.

Equally, you may want to do a range of different things, whether that’s meeting and greeting families coming into the hospital or onto the ward, taking part in play activities or helping out in one of our offices. Whatever you wish to do there are plenty of roles to step into.

Volunteering is about forming a relationship with the hospital, and we ask that volunteers give a minimum of 2 hours a week for at least 6 months (although some volunteers have been with us for 20 years!).

In return, all volunteers are provided with a uniform, public transport travel expenses, training and a written reference, and we produce a newsletter and arrange social events so our volunteers can feel part of life at the hospital.

Get involved

If you are interested in finding out more, please contact us, either by telephone (0121 333 8577) or by email (volunteers@bch.nhs.uk).

You can also use the links on the left to find out more about our different volunteer roles.

We will invite you to our next recruitment fair where you will be able to meet some staff and volunteers and discover more about volunteering.

The dates for our 2013 fairs are:

• Friday 3 May fully booked
• Wednesday 30 October

Attendance is by booking only, which opens on 1 March and 13 September respectively.