Community Engagement Officer. Reading, Berkshire, covering Reading, Wokingham, Bracknell and West Berkshire. Full time, 37.5 hours a week, with Monday to Friday as your core days. From £13.50 an hour, which works out at around £26,000 a year, depending on experience. Care experience needed, and the right personality matters to us far more than a long CV.
Do you actually enjoy talking to people? Are you the sort who ends up chatting to somebody in a queue and comes away knowing their life story, their hip replacement and the name of their dog? Would you rather spend your morning in a day centre, a GP surgery and a mobility shop than behind a desk?
Good. Read on, because we have been looking for you.
The honest reason this job exists
We could spend our money on advertising. Plenty of care companies do. We do not think it is the best use of it.
When somebody needs care at home, it is almost never a calm, planned decision. There has usually been a fall, a hospital stay, or a family that has quietly reached the end of its rope. In that moment people do not go trawling through adverts. They ask somebody they already trust. The social prescriber at the surgery. The manager at the day centre. The woman in the mobility shop. The volunteer who drives them to appointments.
So we would rather invest in one person who becomes a genuinely familiar and trusted face across this patch, so that when that moment arrives for a family, Apex is the name that comes up. Not because somebody remembered a leaflet, but because they know us, they like us, and they are confident we will look after whoever they send our way. That person could be you.
About us
Apex Healthcare Service supports adults across Reading, Wokingham, Bracknell and West Berkshire to carry on living safely and happily in their own homes, including overnight and around the clock support. We are a small, friendly team who would much rather do a brilliant job for a sensible number of people than a rushed job for hundreds.
What you would actually be doing
Getting out on the patch and building real relationships with the organisations and people who our clients already rely on. Not a scattergun approach. We have already mapped out several hundred named organisations across the area and sorted them by how likely they are to help, so your first week is spent visiting rather than researching.
The relationships that matter most, and where you would spend most of your time:
Hospital discharge teams, patient liaison teams and reablement services at Royal Berkshire, Wokingham Community Hospital and the private hospitals.
GP surgeries, and in particular the social prescribers, care coordinators and practice managers. There are around a dozen surgeries across the patch.
District nurses, occupational therapists and physiotherapists, including independent ones.
Sheltered and independent living schemes, where the scheme manager or wellbeing officer knows every resident by name. We have identified about a dozen locally.
Day centres and older people's charities, including Age UK and Age Concern branches in each borough.
Mobility and disability equipment shops, and community pharmacies.
Community transport and volunteer driver schemes.
Memory cafes, dementia groups and the carers centres in each of the four boroughs.
Professionals who go into people's homes and are quietly the best referrers of all, such as mobile hairdressers, chiropodists, home visiting opticians and hearing aid providers.
Slightly slower burning but well worth it: direct payment teams and independent brokers, churches, mosques and mandirs, libraries, leisure centres running senior sessions, local history groups, solicitors doing power of attorney work, and the voluntary sector organisations that between them are the gateway to dozens of smaller community groups.
Alongside the visits, the role includes:
Following up properly. Diarising who to go back to and when, so relationships never go cold. The first visit rarely produces anything. The fourth or fifth one does, because by then you are a person rather than a company.
Getting past reception to a named person, and finding out how they actually prefer to be kept in touch with.
Keeping those relationships warm by phone as well as in person. Not every contact needs a visit, and a well timed call to check in, pass on something useful, or simply thank somebody for a referral does an enormous amount. A good chunk of this job happens with a phone in your hand.
Offering something useful rather than only asking for referrals. A short talk on how to choose a care provider, a falls prevention chat, a dementia awareness session. People remember whoever gave them something.
Attending community events, coffee mornings and health fairs, and working out honestly which ones are worth going back to and which were a wasted Tuesday.
Leaving information packs where they are wanted, in surgery waiting rooms, scheme common rooms and at pharmacy counters. There will also be times when we run a leaflet round in a particular area and you would help plan and deliver it. To be clear, dropping paper is a supporting activity. Talking to people is the job.
Logging every contact and conversation in our system, including what was agreed and when you plan to go back. This matters for two reasons. It proves which relationships genuinely produce, so we can stop wasting your time on the ones that do not. And it means the network belongs to the business rather than sitting in one person's memory.
Passing every enquiry straight through to the office, quickly, because slow follow up would undo your good work.
Helping with recruitment outreach, because the same rooms and conversations that produce clients often produce good carers too.
A typical week
Monday is for planning and following up, because Mondays are the worst day for cold visits and the best day for admin and phone calls. Tuesday to Thursday you are out on the patch, clustered sensibly by area so a Tilehurst morning covers a surgery, a sheltered scheme, a pharmacy and a mobility shop rather than driving across the county to see three day centres. Friday is for logging everything, chasing what came in and preparing for next week. That is a starting shape rather than a rule, and we would agree it with you.
What this job is not
It is not cold calling from a list, and there is no script to read out.
It is not a hard sell. If a family is not ready, they are not ready, and pushing would damage the very relationship we are trying to build.
It is not standing on a high street handing out flyers for six hours.
It is not a desk job, and it is not for somebody who needs to be told what to do every morning.
How we would know it is working
We do not want to micromanage this. The whole point is that you are out there using your own judgement. So instead of watching over your shoulder we would agree a handful of simple measures with you, such as the number of face to face conversations each week, the number of new organisations opened for the first time, how many existing contacts you went back to, how many organisations where you now hold a named contact, and the source of every enquiry that comes in.
An honest word on timescales. Relationships take months, not weeks. We would not expect meaningful referrals in the first couple of months, and we are not going to panic if they do not appear. We would look properly at how it is going at three months and again at six.
What we are looking for
The most important thing by a mile. Somebody people trust quickly. This role is about being out in the community and on the phone, week in and week out, building relationships to the point where a day centre manager, a district nurse or a scheme manager would happily put our name forward. Remember what we are asking of them. When they pass a worried family on to us, they are putting their own reputation on the line, so they will only do it if they feel they are recommending somebody they can trust. That trust is built by the person, not by the leaflet. No sales background needed and definitely no networking course required. We are looking for somebody genuine, warm and easy to talk to, who people simply take to.
Care experience. You will need to have worked in care, ideally in people's own homes, with around a year or more behind you. We are deliberately flexible on the exact length, because the right person with a year is worth far more to us than the wrong person with ten. What matters is that you have genuinely done the work, since everybody you meet will test whether you really understand care within the first two minutes, and a discharge nurse or social prescriber can spot somebody reading from a brochure instantly.
A good attitude, warmth and a bit of humour. In a role that is almost entirely about first impressions, this counts for more than anything on paper.
Somebody who is comfortable walking into a room where they know nobody and starting a conversation.
Somebody who can be told not right now, politely, quite a lot, and still go back three months later without taking it personally.
Self directed enough to plan your own week and decide where your time is best spent, while happy to take a steer on priorities and target areas from the management team.
Organised enough to keep the system up to date as you go, rather than facing a mountain of it on a Friday afternoon.
Nice to have but not essential. Local knowledge of Reading, Wokingham, Bracknell or West Berkshire. Any previous experience of outreach, marketing, community work or fundraising. A Level 3 qualification in health and social care.
What we would give you to work with
The full mapped list of several hundred local organisations, sorted by priority, so you are not starting from a blank page.
A warm handover of the contacts we already hold, since some doors are already ajar.
Proper materials to leave behind, and the freedom to ask for something different if what we have is not landing.
Access to our system so you can log contacts and track what happens to every enquiry.
A named person in the office who picks up your enquiries quickly.
A short catch up each week to start with, moving to fortnightly once you are settled. That is for support and problem solving, not for checking up on you.
The practical bits
Full time, 37.5 hours a week. Monday to Friday are your core days, and that is where the great majority of the work sits, because it is when surgeries, day centres, housing schemes and community groups are actually open.
From £13.50 an hour, depending on experience, which works out at around £26,000 a year. That is the same starting salary as our other office roles, because we think this one matters every bit as much.
Some evening and weekend work will be needed, because that is when a fair number of community events, coffee mornings and health fairs actually happen. It is not every week and it is never sprung on you. We agree it in advance and you take the time back.
Mileage paid for business travel, and there will be a fair amount of it in this role.
A work mobile or a contribution towards your own.
A sensible budget for materials, refreshments and event costs.
Company pension.
Enhanced DBS check, which we arrange and pay for.
You would need your own car and business use on your insurance, which we can factor into the package.
Because we are a small team, there will occasionally be times when everybody steps in, including covering a care call in an emergency or helping when the office is stretched. That is not a regular feature of the role and we would not plan your week around it, but we would rather be straight with you now than surprise you later. You would stay on our training matrix so your mandatory training stays current.
How to apply
Apply through Indeed and we will be in touch. No essay required. Just tell us a bit about your care experience, and one thing about your local area that most people would not know. If you are not sure whether you tick every box, apply anyway. We are far more interested in the person than the CV.
Apex Healthcare Service is an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from everybody, and if you need any adjustments during the process, please just say and we will sort it out.
Pay: From £13.50 per hour
Benefits:
Work Location: In person
