Hearing Help Essex – Meet and Greet Volunteer

Hearing Help Essex is a Charity that exists to alleviate the isolation and loneliness that hearing loss can bring. We work with those who have acquired hearing loss, by offering practical help, support, advice and guidance.

Hearing aids need cleaning and re-tubing every 4-6 months for them to work effectively, we run hearing aid support sessions in the community to support NHS audiology departments for re-tubing and basic maintenance.

We run over 30 sessions a month across Essex in a variety of locations such as community health clinics, day care centres, libraries and church and village halls. Service Users need to book an appointment in advance to attend and appointments take around 10-15minutes, each session usually runs once a month for 2 hours at a time.

The role of the Meet and Greet Volunteer is to provide a warm and friendly welcome to our service users at our community sessions, answer any questions, help set up/clear down sessions with our technical volunteers and to collate and send back sessions forms to the office.

A Hearing Help Essex volunteer should:

· be a good listener

· be patient

· be personable

· understand hearing loss and know how to communicate clearly with those living with hearing loss (after training)

· know how a hearing aid works (after training)

· be able to give accurate advice (after training)

· know about different referral pathways (after training)

We currently need volunteers in the following areas:

• Maldon
• Halstead
• Thurrock
• Uttlesford
• Brentwood
• Basildon – Laindon/Wickford area/Billericay
• Braintree/ Rayne
• Chelmsford

What skills do I need?

A Hearing Help Essex volunteer will:

· Be able to commit to at least 2 hours per month by attending one of our Hearing Aid Support Sessions in the community – depending on vacancies you can volunteer at more than one.

· Check Service Users into the session who have booked an appointment.

· After helping at the session provide feedback to the office on services delivered by the technical volunteers by posting or emailing appropriate forms.

· Talk about the work of HHE and promote it professionally.

· Ensure client confidentiality at all times.

Interests

• Disability
• Health and Social Care
• Older People

Activities

• Local Events
• Supporting Charities
• Supporting People and Befriending