VOLUNTEERS: Can you answer the call to help our older people?

Age UK West Sussex is recruiting people to train as triage telephone volunteers, providing a county-wide information and advice service to help older people, their families and carers make choices according to their circumstances, pointing them to where the appropriate support can be found.

As part of the role, the volunteers are also expected to maintain a database of all the inquiries they handle.

For more information on this or any of the other volunteering opportunities featured this week, please call Volunteer Now! on 01242 864220, or email [email protected]

More volunteer vacancies this week include:

Angmering Community Centre has two roles which need filling – to help serve refreshments in a café setting on Wednesday mornings to users of the centre before or ater activities, and to take over projection duties for the monthly film shows.

The café volunteers serve tea, coffee and biscuits from 10.30am-12.30pm, while the film projectionist will take over from the existing volunteer, who has to give up in the near future, but will be available to give training until July. The film shows at the centre take place on the second Saturday evening of each month (except August and December) and bring a lot of enjoyment to local people.

The West Sussex Parent Partnership Service provides information, advice and support to parents and carers of children who have special educational needs, aiming to encourage partnership between parents, their child’s school, the local authority and other agencies.

The service needs more people to come forward to serve as independent parental supporters, who can help parents by listening to what they have to say, helping them to understand the statutory assessment process, helping to write letters and reports and finding out information for them.

The volunteers also help parents to read through and make sense of official documents, prepare for meetings, and think about options and talk through decisions, and go on school visits and attend school meetings with parents.

St Wilfrid’s Hospice charity shop, at Barnham, needs more volunteers for a range of duties, including sorting and displaying donations, running the shop and operating the till.

With only 14 per cent of its income coming from the NHS, St Wilfrid’s relies on fund-raising, including its charity shops, for the greater part of the cost of running its hospice at Chichester and other services.