Help Urgently Needed

Life as a Duty Officer - A volunteer’s perspective

Nancy - A long serving Duty Officer

Hi. My name is Nancy and I am one of a small band of Duty Officers helping to keep our branch working efficiently. A Duty Officer is probably the first person people will speak to so it is important that we are polite and do our best to answer their questions and help where we can.

Calls can be about anything to do with cats: people wanting us to re-home their cat for whatever reason; people who want to adopt a cat from us; people who have lost their cat and want to know if we can help trace it. Each Duty Officer has a folder containing names, phone numbers and email addresses of the volunteers in our branch so at the end of our shift we go through the calls we have received and allocate them to the person responsible for the specific matter involved. When someone phones in wanting to adopt a cat or kitten, we take their name, address and telephone number, details of their home circumstances, e.g. garden, children, other pets, and a rough idea of what they are looking for. This information is then passed on to whomever homechecks that particular area. We have a complete list of homecheckers for villages plus streets in Kempston and Bedford.

This information can be either emailed or phoned to the homechecker at the end of our duty. Any cat that has been lost or found goes to Debbie, our Lost and Found officer, Sharon deals with requests for neutering vouchers and most of the rest goes to Tamsin.

I am on duty for a full day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Some Duty Officers do half a day, either 9 p.m. to 1 p.m. or 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. If anyone can spare just four hours a week manning the phone from home we would be delighted to hear from you. We have a reroute service so your home telephone number will not be disclosed to the public. Plus we get some money to go towards the cost of any calls we make.

If you like chatting to people and at the same time helping cats then perhaps you would consider joining us.

We urgently require people like Nancy to help us on our phone lines. Can you offer a half or full day a week? Please either call us on 08442 496911 or email enquiries@bedfordcatsprotection.org.uk to discuss further.

Home Visitors Required

We also urgently need Home Visitors in the Biggleswade/Sandy area. If you are interested then please contact us to discuss further. Full training will be given.