Volunteer to Career

Hospice UK’s Volunteer to Career programme will award grants of £10,000 each to up to 10 hospices to support the professional development and recruitment of volunteers considering a career in healthcare.

In addition to the funding grant, Hospice UK and partner charity Helpforce will:

• help each participating hospice to identify and build internal capacity to deliver the work
• help each hospice to find and match interested volunteers from their local communities
• provide a blended learning programme for participating hospice Clinical Leads, who will work within their hospices to mentor the new volunteers
• help with project planning and data collection to build evidence of the value of the project.

In Round 1, we are supporting four hospices to implement the programme. We are currently running Round 2 of the applications process.

The volunteers taking part in Volunteer to Career will undertake 60 hours of certificated training over the course of one year.

This training will require support from a dedicated Clinical Lead at their hospice.

By the end of their training, volunteers will be supported onto a career pathway aligned to your hospice’s identified workforce needs i.e. either via a university course, workplace apprenticeship, or paid employment route into eventually becoming a healthcare assistant (clinical band 2 or 3) or a nursing associate (clinical band 4).

We welcome applications from any hospice that understands the programme and how it will benefit them. If you would like to discuss your hospice's suitability for the programme before you apply, please contact us.

Although not essential, we have identified some key criteria which can help the programme to run successfully:

In Round 2, we are looking to award up to 6 grants of £10,000 each. 

This is to contribute towards the cost of supporting Clinical Leads to undertake this piece of work. Please note that other expenses arising from the programme (e.g. volunteer expenses) will need to be covered by the hospice. 

The deadline for applications for Round 2 is 17:00 on Friday, 20 September 2024. 

Applicants will be informed whether or not they have been successful at the end of October 2024.

Eligible organisations are independent adult and children's hospices that are members of Hospice UK and based in the UK, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.

Images on this page courtesy of The Centre for Ageing Better.