Volunteering at Swings & Smiles is all about using your personal skills and interests to help enrich the service we provide to children and families. You will be supported by the Centre Coordinator and the rest of the staff team in whatever role you choose to undertake and will be a valued part of the Swings & Smiles family.

Below are some of our current volunteering opportunities, but we are always open to suggestions if you have a different skill you think could help us!

  • Support at Play Sessions – We need friendly volunteers to help at all of our play sessions. Duties may include helping to make teas and coffees for parents, assisting with craft or cooking activities, playing with children and talking to families. We run sessions on weekdays, after school and on weekends.
  • Cooking Club – Our cooking club for over 8s has been a huge hit with our families so we’re looking for regular volunteers to help us open this up to more children. Each week the children join us to learn to cook something new which they all eat together. This session currently runs on Mondays from 3.30pm-5.30pm and a new group will be starting on Thursday at the same time from May 2018.
  • SIBS sessions – Support for siblings is really important and we run sessions once a month on a Friday evening from 6.30-8.30pm and on a Saturday from 10am-12pm. We are looking for volunteers who can help us at these and provide support to siblings of children with special needs by spending some time playing and doing activities with them, or even just having a chat. Sometimes we’ll also go out on trips!
  • Lego Club – If you love Lego, or even if you don’t, our Lego club for over 8s is great fun. This runs once a month on a Friday evening from 6.30-8.30pm and is an enjoyable and relaxed session.
  • Support at the Centre – To assist us with the smooth-running of our busy calendar of sessions sometimes we need a bit of help with admin tasks, making resources and cleaning and maintaining the centre and our equipment. This could be flexible around you, there will always be plenty of jobs to keep you busy!
  • Support at Events – Sometimes we hold fundraising events outside of the centre and need some extra hands to help us with setting up, during the event and packing up at the end. During the event tasks may include greeting people, serving refreshments or generally helping things to run smoothly. We need some volunteers who we can call on as and when we have these events.
  • Garden and Grounds Maintenance –  Do you have skills that could help us in the garden and our outdoor areas? We need some help keeping our grounds neat and tidy, particularly during the summer months. This could be a flexible volunteer role, fitting around times when the centre isn’t in use. This would possibly be a weekly commitment during the summer but less frequent in the colder months.

Coming to Swings & Smiles is a happy and satisfying experience. Working with highly motivated and qualified staff provides me with the confidence to really get involved. The families that use the centre are lovely and it is a real pleasure to see Swings & Smiles provide the service that it has strived for so long to achieve. Volunteering at Swings & Smiles is brilliant, come and join us!

If you would like to find out more about any of these opportunities, or suggest an alternative way that you could help which we may not have thought of, then you can register your interest or email [email protected].

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