Contract: Permanent, 18.75 hours per week
Salary: £12,488 (£24,976 FTE)
Location: Burford, OX18 4PF
Closing date: Tuesday 16th June 2026
Interview date: Tuesday 23rd 2026
We’re recruiting a Pet Welfare Assistant for off-site animal care, for our Rehoming & Fostering team in Burford.
At Blue Cross, we're dedicated to providing the best care possible to pets in need. As a Pet Welfare Assistant for our offsite services, you'll play an important role in our mission, ensuring that every pet receives the love, attention, and support they deserve whilst they are in our offsite care.
Our Burford centre has a wonderful group of dedicated people with varying skills that meld into one team with one mission: to help as many pets as possible. With great facilities, including a woodland, the team are proud of what they can accomplish on a daily basis together.
As a Pet Welfare Assistant – Off-site Services, you will be responsible for expertly managing a specific number of pet cases within the offsite pet care service, these can be rehoming pets in foster or Home Direct service or pets in temporary crisis care.
You will be ensuring welfare standards are met and that rehabilitation plans are followed and supported for pets in foster homes. As we want to help as many pets as possible, this role will be responsible for ensuring the assessment of pets preparing for a new home in offsite services is completed in the quickest amount of time.
For many, the centre will be the ‘public face’ of Blue Cross so you will need to ensure that good customer service is at the heart of every interaction. At Blue Cross we are ambitious, and the work carried out by our centres is key in achieving our strategy and ensuring that ultimately, we help more pets and people.
At our Burford rehoming centre, we provide onsite accommodation for pets in our care 24/7. Overnight shifts are usually undertaken by team members who live on site. Occasionally, you will be expected to carry out night checks or stay in on site accommodation overnight when the resident team members are either not working or away for a period of time. These duties are organised on a local rota and shared between all members of the team.
This role is working 2.5 days a week across a 4-week rota:
Week 1: Monday, Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday. Week 2: Tuesday and Wednesday. Week 3: Monday, Tuesday. Week 4: Tuesday and Wednesday.
If you excel in an environment where you can see the difference you make every day, then this is the role for you. Interested? Then apply and let’s work together to see if this is the role for you.
The person will be empathetic, intuitive, and focused on animal welfare, with experience in a similar environment. You can assess pet needs, recognise behavioural signs, and have a basic understanding of medications like flea treatments and diabetes management. Self-motivated and collaborative, you bring practical, creative solutions for the best care outcomes.
Your communication skills are first-class, making you approachable and effective in sharing critical information with fosterers, clients, and stakeholders. You're resilient and emotionally intelligent, able to thrive in emotionally charged situations while supporting both clients and colleagues with empathy.
Knowledge, skills, and experience
- Experience of having previously worked or volunteered with domestic animals or in an animal welfare environment.
- Good experience of recording information and being able to accurately convey this when communicating with others
- Previous experience in working in a customer focused environment and used to achieving a high level of customer satisfaction.
- Good organisational and administration skills to include computerised systems.
- A full driving licence.
- The ability to demonstrate, understand and apply our Blue Cross values.
Although not essential, it would be great if you also had:
- Qualification or similar experience in animal behaviour or animal training.
- Experience of cash handling.
- Experience of working to strict health and safety procedures.
- Understanding of safeguarding issues.
How to apply
Click the apply button below and complete the online application process before the closing date on Tuesday 16th June 2026.
We reserve the right to close this vacancy early should we receive an overwhelming response.
Our people are the most important part of delivering our purpose. If it were not for their amazing efforts and commitment, we would not be able to make the difference that we do today.
In return, Blue Cross wants to ensure we provide you with the best working environment we can. We want you to be happy working for us and will do everything we can to make sure you are.
Our generous benefits package includes:
- Full time equivalent of 38 days holiday rising to 43 with service (including Bank Holidays)
- Programmes for physical and mental wellbeing support
- Free access to GP via MetLife- 24/7 GP services, private prescriptions and more for you and your family
- Health cash plan
- Unlimited access to an employee assistance programme
- Pension scheme with enhanced employer contribution
- Professional fees paid with Continuing Professional Development and personal development support.
- Life assurance
- 20% discount on Pet Plan pet insurance
- Enhanced family friendly policies
- Recognition scheme
- Annual volunteer days
- Charity worker discounts across a variety of retailers
To read more about the benefits Blue Cross has to offer, please visit the 'why work for us' page on our website.
If you’d like to learn more about Blue Cross, our mission, and the work we do to support animals and people, take a look at our About Us page
