Gardening and Outdoor Maintenance Volunteer

Location: Barnardos, Millbrook Lawns Health Centre, Tallaght, Dublin 24.

Description of Project:

Barnardos Millbrook is based in the Millbrook Lawns Health Centre in Tallaght. We provide preschool and family support services to vulnerable children and families.

Part of our service involves providing a quality walled outdoor space that includes some planting, gravel play area, large play houses and a large area covered by rubber tiles for cycling, running and other outdoor activities.

Our team consists of 13 people, including a cook, a driver, a cleaner, an administration worker, a project leader and 8 frontline staff providing direct services to children and families.

Outline of Volunteers Tasks and Responsibilities:

We are seeking a volunteer with an interest and experience in gardening and caring for an outdoor environment. We hope that the volunteer would be available to come in once or twice a month to help with the maintenance of our outdoor area as follows:

• To help with maintenance of the outdoor rubber tiled area including sweeping and power washing monthly.
• Gardening – maintaining the various planted areas including shrubs, flowers and some planters.
• Help with general tidying of any rubbish/leaf debris in the outdoor area
• Help with identifying areas for improvement and suggesting ideas for improving the outdoor area.

Training and Support Plan:

• Barnardos Millbrook will provide induction, and follow up training with the volunteer as required.
• The volunteer is requested to attend some compulsory training such as manual handling and child protection training – this is online and full support will be provided to facilitate this.
• The volunteer will be provided with all necessary equipment and is welcome to recommend other items that may be required.
• The volunteer is supervised by Project Leader, with delegation to some project staff as assigned by the Project Leader.

Time Commitment:

We are seeking a volunteer who can come once or twice monthly for 2 - 3 hours. In general it is envisaged that the volunteer would come in the afternoon, but daytime can be facilitated also if required to suit the volunteer. Our service operates Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Because we are based in a HSE health centre we do not have access on evenings or at the weekend.

Person Specification:

• Friendly & polite, and who would enjoy building positive relationships with our team.
• Patience to deal with the various requests that can arise.
• Understanding and flexibility in relation to the possibility of things sometimes changing at short notice.
• Awareness of importance of confidentiality in relation to service users, and an understanding of their right to privacy.
• Experience and knowledge of caring for an outdoor environment would be very welcome.
• As this volunteer role involves physical work (sweeping, power washing, gardening etc) the volunteer should be able to commit to this type of activity.

Application process, Garda Vetting and References required

For more information or to register your interest in this volunteer role please contact volunteers@barnardos.ie