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The Balloch walking group meet every Wednesday morning to go for a short, accessible walk, before winding up in a café for a cuppa and a blether. This simple activity has enormous health and social benefits for the walkers, as well as providing an opportunity to connect with and enjoy nature. We are looking for walk leaders to provide a friendly face on the walks and keep participants safe and happy throughout the walks. This is an opportunity for you to help out in a local community, and also to gain new skills, as well as staying active and making new friends on the walk. All our volunteers receive walk leader training, and are also offered other trainings throughout the year, as detailed below. Please get in touch if you are interested in joining us!

We are looking for volunteer Lead Readers to help facilitate our shared reading groups, which take place in a variety of locations across Scotland, whilst some of our groups meet online. Group sessions involve reading part of a book and a poem aloud, before having an informal and friendly discussion about what we've read. The Lead Reader's role is to select the reading material for each session and help to guide the discussion so that everyone feels included. We can offer flexible opportunities to suit different schedules. We currently have specific vacancies in Edinburgh on Monday mornings, and on Thursday afternoons and evenings with our online groups, but if you have other availability, we'd still love to hear from you.

Would you like to support people who have served in the Armed Forces? You don’t need a military background, just the ability to listen, some basic I.T skills and good written and spoken English. If so, this could be the role for you. What is a caseworker? Caseworkers work with clients to figure out what type of help they need. Next, they find the right sources of support and arrange for clients to access it. This might be funds for special equipment for someone with a disability, adaptions to a property so an older client can remain at home or funds for a rental deposit. Caseworkers also sign-post clients onto specialist local services for advice on benefits, housing, mental health, debt, finding work etc. Why do we need you? Volunteer Caseworkers are the lifeblood of SSAFA, supporting a growing number of people in need of financial, practical and emotional support. Clients come from all backgrounds and age groups and may have served in WW2 or in a more recent conflict like Iraq or Afghanistan. Our trained volunteers listen without judgement to assess and provide tailored support to help people navigate life in and beyond military service. We need you to join your local SSAFA team to help us achieve this.

Would you like to support people who have served in the Armed Forces? You don't need a military background just patience, and an ability to get on with people from different backgrounds and age groups. If so, this could be the role for you. SSAFA Visitors provide support to isolated people living at home or in residential care. Whilst a friendly chat about the old days over a cup of tea, playing cards, looking at old photo albums or military momentum is an important aspect of the role you will also be able to recognise any other support needs and explore how to link your client into their local community and arrange for a SSAFA caseworker to assess the client for other support needed. The essential part of the role is visiting the client. Whilst you will visit a client on a regular basis for a period you will not be developing a kind of relationship where you will provide personal care, handle money or support someone in an emergency. SSAFA can help clients to arrange other types of support if needed.

Would you like to help blind and partially sighted people in your community? Do you enjoy driving and meeting new people? RNIB wants you to be a Volunteer Driver. For the people they help, our volunteer drivers provide a friendly face to brighten their day and help get them to where they need to be. Our drivers can become a regular part of someone’s life and it may be the only chance an RNIB customer has had to get out of their home for some time. If you are friendly, courteous and reliable then this is the opportunity for you. We are particularly looking for drivers in Glasgow and Ayr. *Reliable and punctual *Willingness to work independently *This role requires membership of the PVG (Protecting Vulnerable Groups) Scheme (Adults) and 2 references. Additional location information West of Scotland. Drivers particularly needed in Greater Glasgow and Ayr.

Are you a good listener? Are you able to manage group conversations and ensure people feel comfortable together and that groups run smoothly? We need you to facilitate our Talk and Support weekly telephone groups that offer blind and partially sighted people the opportunity to socialise with others when the regular group facilitator is unavailable. This is a telephone-based role that you can do from home. You will need access to a landline and/or mobile phone We ask you to commit to covering up to 3 groups per week, although this will vary on a week by week basis. Each group you cover will last for one hour. Listening to group conversations, ensuring they flow and are appropriate. Making appropriate contributions. Creating friendly & welcoming atmosphere. Being link between the group & Talk & Support team. Reporting safeguarding concerns.

An exciting opportunity has arisen within the Patients’ Advocacy Service who is based in The State Hospital. PAS is a company limited by guarantee with charitable status. We are looking to recruit new Board members to participate in the governance and achievement of the strategic objectives of the organisation. The current Board has a diverse combination of skills and experiences, candidates with a background in finance, mental health, human resources and current or previous voluntary sector experience would be particularly welcomed. PAS provides an independent, highly skilled, responsible and professionally run service within The State Hospital, whilst observing the safety and security. The service works within the hospital and promotes patients as individuals. We aim to give the patients a voice to have their views respected, their voices heard, to support and to enable patients to be fully informed and involved in decisions regarding their care and treatment. Our service works with those from across Scotland and Northern Ireland, we have a number of ethnicities, religions, abilities and ages. We wish to diversify the board to ensure all voices are represented. If you have the time, the skills and the passion to make a difference to this marginalised group of individuals, please reach out to us for an informal chat. Some of the duties board members are expected to take part in are to attend board meetings; ensure good governance of the organisation; contribute to policies, development and strategy of the service; foster positive working relationships with the PAS team and State Hospital colleagues; oversee the current service and development of future projects; actively participate in staff recruitment where appropriate and contribute proactively to the Board in reaching quality decisions.

We are looking for a Trustee to serve on our Board for the benefit of the charity. You may have a specific skill to offer or a general willingness to offer help and assistance to the Duty Managers, the Chair and fellow members of the Board. Mind-On is an Orkney charity raising funds for mental health in Orkney. Money raised in the charity shop stays in Orkney to fund grants for organisations supporting positive mental health here – so supporting Mind-On as a volunteer means you are supporting mental health in Orkney. If you have the ethos of our charity to heart, we would love to hear from you.

Are you passionate about positive mental health? Do you believe in the strength of community? Do you have a few hours to spare every 6-8 weeks (minimum commitment)? We are seeking to appoint new members of the Board of Trustees to support Changes strategic development. Our Trustees are there to lead, control and supervise the organisation’s activities. The main responsibilities of a Trustee are detailed below (Scottish Charity for Voluntary Organisation definitions): • Set and maintain the vision, mission and values of the organisation. • Develop direction, strategy and planning. • Ensure the organisation has the structure and resources for its work. • Establish policies and procedures to govern organisational activity, including guidance for the board, volunteers, and staff. • Establish systems for reporting and monitoring. • Manage risk and ensure compliance and accountability with the governing document, external regulators and the law. • Make certain that the financial affairs of the organisation are conducted properly and are accurately reported.

The volunteer producer will operate and maintain the recording equipment in our small studio to record the volunteer readers who come in to record excerpts from the local newspapers, books, magazines etc. The recordings are copied to USBs which are then sent out to our sight impaired membership. When the service users have finished with them, they return the USBs to us so that we can delete the old recordings and replace them with new ones. We need volunteers with relevant skills/expertise in audio software such as Audacity/Windows 10, who can work on a digital audio recording system for our Talking Newspapers Service for the Blind. Volunteers are needed to help us maintain and keep this vital recording equipment in good running order.