Southport and Ormskirk hospitals are appealing for volunteers to support patients and staff during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Therese Patten, Deputy Chief Executive of Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust, said: “Hospital volunteers have always played an important role in supporting our hospitals. It is more important than ever that clinical staff and volunteers work together to keep our families, friends and loved ones as safe as we possibly can.”

The hospitals have roles available in the following non-patient facing roles:

• Portering (general movement of items, e.g. post, samples, furniture moves, meals, snack boxes, etc)
• Laundry (folding, sorting, ironing, packing, drying, cage cleaning, etc)
• Domestics (clean corridors)
• Catering (restaurant cleaning, kitchen cleaning, loading dishwasher, making up snack boxes)

Applicants must be aged over 17 to apply. There is information about the roles and an applications form on the Trust website, including this video.

People can also volunteer to work with NHS more widely by applying to the Government’s NHS Volunteer Responders scheme.