Friendship Coordinator

Age UK's Telephone Friendship Service is recruiting for Friendship Coordinators to join our growing team!

Loneliness is a major issue that is now widely recognised in society today, particularly amongst older people. By scheduling weekly calls from our trained volunteers, Age UK's National Telephone Friendship Service provides older people with a chance to make a new friend from the comfort of their home.

As a Friendship Coordinator, you will play a vital role in coordinating and supporting the thousands of matches between our members and volunteers across the UK. Whether you are answering emails and calls, ensuring safeguarding measures are upheld or supporting members and volunteers through the onboarding processes, you will be helping to ensure this much needed service reaches those who need it most, in a safe and efficient manner.

Utilising your excellent customer service skills, you will be the first port of call to support our volunteers and older members - so you'll need to be comfortable spending a lot of time on the phone and communicating by email. You'll also need to be passionate about supporting older people and have a good understanding of older people's needs.

This role can either be based at our office in Blackpool, or in Ashburton Devon. We offer a hybrid model of home and office based-working, so you will need to be within a reasonable distance of either the Blackpool or Devon office and be willing to travel there regularly. As a guide, the team currently work from the office once a fortnight but please be aware this could increase in the future.

You will work a 35-hour working week, 5 days out of 7 with start and end times between 8am and 6pm. It will include weekend and bank holiday shifts, which will be arranged on a rota basis.

In your Supporting Statement, please include examples of how you meet the Must Have criteria below.

We are looking to recruit highly motivated individuals to join our friendly and supportive Friendship team - if this sounds like you, please apply for immediate consideration.

Please note: before joining the National Services team at Age UK, we want to be open that the organisation is in a period of change. Age UK works as a network of over 100 independent partners, with national services delivered by the charity and local services delivered by partners across the UK. Our new strategy means more services will be delivered locally in future, although we think our National Services will continue to play an important role. You would be joining a team that is evolving and changing to develop new ways of supporting older people, and we want you to have this context as you consider your application.

Last date for applications Thursday 22nd January 2026.

Must haves:

The below competencies will be assessed at the indicated stage of the recruitment process:
Application = A, Interview = I, Test = T, Presentation = P

Skills and knowledge:

• Excellent communication skills - both written and verbal. A, I, T
• Confident and friendly telephone manner. A, I
• Excellent IT skills including Microsoft Office. A, I, T
• Ability to manage a busy workload. A, I

Personal Attributes:

• A passion for supporting older people. A, I
• A commitment to promoting equality and diversity. A
• Being a positive team player. A, I

Great to haves:

The below competencies will be assessed at the indicated stage of the recruitment process:
Application = A, Interview = I, Test = T, Presentation = P

Experience:

• Experience supporting volunteers. A, I
• Experience of working with older people over the phone. A, I

Skills & Knowledge:

• An understanding of older people's issues. A, I
• Knowledge of safeguarding issues. A, I

What we offer in return

• Competitive salary, 26 days annual leave + bank holidays + annual leave purchase scheme
• Wellbeing days - 2 paid days per year (pro rata for our part-time colleagues)
• Excellent pension scheme, life assurance, Bupa health cashback plan and EAP
• Car Benefit scheme, Cycle to Work scheme
• Home & Tech - apply to buy any Home & Tech items from 'Currys' & 'IKEA', up to £1000, and spread the cost over 12 months, interest free. (subject to affordability)
• Blue Light Card scheme
• You Did It Awards - recognition awards from £100-250.

Additional Information

Supporting statements and anonymisation
Candidates are expected to provide a supporting statement that explains how they meet the competencies annotated with an A in the job description, to assess suitability for the position. Age UK acknowledges and accepts that AI may be used to support the application; we do expect candidates to personalise experience, knowledge and skills and failure to do so, may result in your application being rejected.

Please submit a Word version of your CV as it will be anonymised by our recruitment system when you apply for a role. Our system is unable to anonymise supporting statements and heavily formatted CVs. Please could you remove any personal information including your name before you upload to support our inclusive recruitment process. All equalities monitoring information is also anonymised and not shared with the hiring panel. Your name and address will only be known to us if invited for interview.

Equal opportunities & Disability Confident Scheme
Age UK is an Equal Opportunities employer and positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates, regardless of age, sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or belief, marital/civil partnership status, or pregnancy and maternity. Age UK is a Disability Confident Scheme employer. Due to high numbers of applications received, Age UK reserves the right to limit the overall number of interviews offered, and therefore, it may not always be practicable or appropriate to interview all disabled people that meet the minimum criteria for the job.

Reasonable adjustments
Disabled job seekers can access reasonable adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. All requests for reasonable adjustments are considered on a case-by-case basis, in collaboration with the disabled job seeker to best meet their needs, by contacting the Recruitment Team. Disability disclosures will be kept confidential and only shared on a need-to-know basis to support the implementation of adjustments. Disclosures will not be used to inform hiring decisions.

Age UK is committed to safeguarding adults at risk, and children, from abuse and neglect. We expect everyone who works with us to share this commitment.

Early application is encouraged as we will review applications throughout the advertising period and reserve the right to close the advert at any time.

Age UK politely requests no contact from recruitment agencies or media sales. We do not accept speculative CVs from recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.

For a full list of benefits please visit our website.