St John Ambulance Community Visitor

As part of the Community Visitors Scheme, St John Ambulance provide face to face opportunities for student volunteers to engage with people living in local Residential Aged Care facilities. COVID has further highlighted the need for connection and friendship within our older community. Whilst our clients are living in a facility, the staff often do not have time to sit down regularly, have a cup of tea and chat.

Our volunteers will be allocated a client whom they will meet regularly with the expectation that a friendship and connection will blossom. We will often try to connect people with similar interests, or we can support conversation topics or suggest games, trivia to help grow that relationship.

The role

Provide regular social visits to people living in Aged Care Facilities in the Brisbane Region to support and enable friendships and social connection in the hopes of combating social isolation. You will be placed within an Aged Care Facility that has a Lifestyle Co-ordinator/other staff member on site. You will be allocated to one/two clients and are expected to:

• Adhere to the regulations of the Aged Care facilities
• Meet your client in their room or the lounge area regularly - isolated people very much look forward to the visits so a commitment to regularity is required.
• Spend 1 hour minimum with the client talking about topics of interest
• Record your interaction with your client via our volunteer management system app
• Keep your volunteer co-ordinator informed of any challenges/concerns

How to apply

More information about requirements, dates, times, and locations for this opportunity can be found on InPlace. Students can also apply to any available opportunity directly through InPlace. For information and tools on how to use InPlace, please refer to 'Applying with InPlace' module in the Community Engagement Canvas Course.

Before applying for an opportunity please ensure:

• You understand and will follow any COVID-safe practices as determined by ACU, the organisation offering this opportunity or the public health orders of your state.
• You are willing to undertake further processing as required and acknowledge that your ACU email address and the information you provide in your application will be shared with the organisation that offers this opportunity. The organisation will keep your personal information confidential.
• You have read the 'Safety and Wellbeing' module in the Community Engagement course.

Opportunities are available in line with the needs of our community partners. If this opportunity is not listed in InPlace it may not be open, it may be at capacity, or you may not be eligible.

Check InPlace

Contact

If you have any questions about this opportunity, please contact ACU Engagement.
acuengagement@acu.edu.au