Volunteering

We offer several volunteering positions all of which go towards supporting the charity’s day to day activities.

Please note we cannot facilitate Work Experience placements due to the nature of our workload; all staff are volunteers and there is no standard day and night schedule, meaning we are unable to commit to specific hours to support and supervise students

Foster Care


Our Foster Care Network was launched back in 2009, which gives supported volunteers the chance to play a vital role in the final stages of an animal’s rehabilitation journey back to the wild.
The purpose of the network is to maintain facilties in donor gardens to act as a final step between a patient no longer requiring hospital treatment and release. Most foster care work is for rescued Hedgehogs who are typically moved outdoors into an outside pen following treatment where the spend a number of days to several weeks in supportive care until they are fit for release, thus relieving pressure on the charity’s ICU resources.

All that is required is a small animal enclosure (provided by the charity) in a garden location, involving only regular weight checks, food and water.
Most of our Hedgehogs then complete their rehabilitation journey using Soft Release – a means of reintroducing an animal that may have spent several weeks or months in captivity in a supported environment back into the wild. Soft Release requires a suitable habitat location free from hazards with an existing healthy population of the species in question; the animal is allowed to leave of it’s own accord while food is continually made available after release until no longer taken.

To find out more information about joining our Foster Care Network, please email us

Casualty Collection Volunteer (CCV)

Our Casualty Collection Volunteer scheme was launced in 2018, building on existing volunteer networks to improve how we attend rescue and collections of sick & injured wild animals over such a wide geogrpahical area.

 

Casualty Collection Volunteers are a dedicated team of individuals who respond to callouts after call triage from the charity, based on location and type of incident – typivcally, most CCV attendances are for boxed casualties only.

CCV’s also respond to requests as First Responders where a callout request has been given but there is nobody at the scene to confirm if an animal is still there, or in cases where several casualties are involved and require “spotting” before futher volunteers are sent out.
All CCVs recieve basic training in assessing sick & injured animals before relaying the casualty onwards depending on the case in question. Most casualties are then transported to supporting veterinary surgeries, foster carers or the charity’s ICU for hospitalisation.

For more information about the Casualty Collection Volunteer role, please email us