Volunteer Gardener - Young Onset Dementia Group

Job summary

With an underused sensory garden and garden at the back, Highpoint House, home to Children & Young People's therapies, has an invaluable opportunity to:-

1. Bring people together to improve their health and wellbeing

2. Improve the aesthetics of the sensory garden

3. Be creative in providing a calm and relaxing space within the sensory garden

4. Co-produce with service users and the local community

5. Improve biodiversity through plant diversity

6. Provide good quality habitat for wildlife

7. Allow nature to be therapeutic

8. Increase the quality of access to nature

9. Reduce harmful practice in daily practice to limit the loss to our eco-systems.

Main duties of the job

Key Task and Responsibilities:

A volunteer would provide invaluable support to:

• 1. Maintain planted areas, with regular watering, weeding, mulching etc.
• 2. Support improvements to the sensory garden
• 3. Create wildlife habitats, such as insect hotels, bird boxes
• 4. Monitor butterflies, pollinators, plants and other wildlife
• 5. Work alongside and support volunteer gardener at Memorial Hospital site
• 6. Work with small groups of service users as 'garden buddies'
• 7. Share knowledge and experience with 'garden buddies'
• 8. Encourage participation of 'garden buddies'
• 9. Maintain and monitor the upkeep of any tools and materials
• 10. Report any concerns or issues about 'garden buddies' to named employee for Oxleas NHS Trust at that time
• 11. Report any concerns or issues about the garden or materials to the Sustainability Manager

When working with Oxleas Service Users:

Responsibility for the group (or any service user working with the volunteer) will lie with a named employee of Oxleas NHS Trust. Someone employed by the Trust will be with the group (or individual) throughout any activity

About us

Oxleas - About Us

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children's centres, schools and people's homes.

We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:

• We're Kind
• We're Fair
• We Listen
• We Care

Job responsibilities

With a underused sensory garden and garden at the back, Highpoint House, home to Children & Young Peoples therapies has an invaluable opportunity to:-

1. Bring people together to improve their health and wellbeing

2. Improve the aesthetics of the sensory garden

3. Be creative in providing a calm and relaxing space within the sensory garden

4. Co-produce with service users and the local community

5. Improve biodiversity through plant diversity

6. Provide good quality habitat for wildlife

7. Allow nature to be therapeutic

8. Increase the quality of access to nature

9. Reduce harmful practice in daily practice to limit the loss to our eco-systems.

Key Task and Responsibilities:

A volunteer would provide invaluable support to:

• 1. Maintain planted areas, with regular watering, weeding, mulching etc.
• 2. Support improvements to the sensory garden
• 3. Create wildlife habitats, such as insect hotels, bird boxes
• 4. Monitor butterflies, pollinators, plants and other wildlife
• 5. Work alongside and support volunteer gardener at Memorial Hospital site
• 6. Work with small groups of service users as garden buddies
• 7. Share knowledge and experience with garden buddies
• 8. Encourage participation of garden buddies
• 9. Maintain and monitor the upkeep of any tools and materials
• 10. Report any concerns or issues about garden buddies to named employee for Oxleas NHS Trust at that time
• 11. Report any concerns or issues about the garden or materials to the Sustainability Manager

When working with Oxleas Service Users:

Responsibility for the group (or any service user working with the volunteer) will lie with a named employee of Oxleas NHS Trust. Someone employed by the Trust will be with the group (or individual) throughout any activity

Person specification

Knowledge

Essential

• Applicant must have a knowledge of gardening, plants, wildlife

Skills

Essential

• Applicant must be extremely patient, kind & caring and be able to adapt to change at the last minute

Care

Essential

• Applicant must have a care of the environment and the wildlife habitat