Community Activities Facilitator – Older Adults

The role
In this role, you'll deliver some of our existing groups, such as our Happy Mondays group, Friday Social Club and a lively Stroke Club. With the support of volunteers and community members, you'll coordinate other smaller peer-led and tutor-led groups (from exercise classes to a mental health support group for older women) and create new groups to be delivered in-person and digitally too. You will support our Neighbourhood Care Coordination work by carrying out some home assessments on clients to identify their individual needs. Working closely with health, adult social care and voluntary sector organisations, as well as liaising with referees, you will work hard to ensure clients’ and their carers needs are met, providing help with anything from applying for making adaptions in the home to supporting them to get involved in one of our many groups or projects.

A key part of the role is involving older adults and carers themselves in the delivery of the programme as volunteers, and involving people of all ages and backgrounds from the local community - from NHS health professionals to local artists and students. You will also need to build individual relationships of trust with older participants, and work closely with our Neighbourhood Care Coordinator and Older Adult’s Programme Manager to ensure we take a joined-up approach to caring for individuals.

This role is full time, with flexibility for regular evening and occasional weekend working.
Time & Talents is wholly committed to inclusion and diversity, and to building a culture and environment where everyone is appreciated for the unique person that they are. We actively encourage applications from a broad range of backgrounds and experiences.

About you
The role needs someone creative, energetic, passionate, but importantly, also highly organised. You must be as comfortable making sure a minibus schedule is up to date, as you are delivering craft activities or quizzes, or as comfortable hosting NHS professionals delivering healthcare advice, as you would be helping run an escorted visit to a local farm. You need to have lots of ideas, and be highly ambitious, but also be able to make your ideas happen.

Most of all, we need someone who cares deeply about the welfare of older adults and their carers, and is able to react quickly and appropriately to emerging issues – especially to the more serious care issues we inevitably encounter. While appropriate training will be given, we are looking for candidates with some social care experience ideally.

What we do
Time & Talents is a lively, busy community centre in the heart of Rotherhithe, SE16. Set in a leafy heritage building, and ‘T&T2’, our second venue in Surrey Quays Shopping Centre, we offer something for everyone. With a history of 134 years of supporting people of all ages in Rotherhithe and Bermondsey, we bring people together for mutual support, fun and friendship, with a wide range of services and activities for older people and other adults, along with volunteering and children and families’ projects.

We work with around 400 older adults and their carers a year, many of whom are very frail and elderly. Sadly, though they very often get left out: their friendships and networks disappear, family and friends move away, and they end up very lonely and isolated. Once that happens, mental and physical illness too often follow. We believe that surrounding older adults with a welcoming, nurturing community, is vital to improving and maintaining their wellbeing. We also know they want to thrive, create, feel a sense of purpose, and continue living their lives to the full, for their whole lives.

In response to this we offer one to one support and case-working, befriending, and an exciting programme of social and support groups with fully escorted transport. We also run fun events and intergenerational activities to bring the whole community together. From reminiscence, art, music, and health and wellbeing advice, to outings and new and exciting experiences, no two days are the same.

We are an energetic, experienced, and passionate team of 15, with a strong sense of shared purpose and a lively sense of humour. You’ll have the chance to make a big contribution to a growing, ambitious and innovative organisation which has doubled its reach and impact in recent years.