Helpline Officer

The Silver Line Helpline is recruiting for 4x Helpline Officers to join their fantastic team providing a vital service to older people across the UK. The Silver Line Helpline is a free, confidential telephone service offering friendship, conversation and support to older people, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Representing the values of The Silver Line Helpline and Age UK, you will be the first point of contact for incoming calls from older people in need of support or just a friendly chat. Given the nature of the helpline each day will be varied and you will need to be adaptable to lots of unique situations. This exciting opportunity is perfect for a friendly individual with effective communication skills and the ability to maintain high standards with an emphasis on empathy, patience and understanding.

Working as part of this supportive team, you will adhere to all safeguarding procedures in order to keep callers safe from potential abuse or neglect.

We have 4 part-time vacancies working 28 hours across days and evenings. These exciting positions offer hybrid working between home and our Blackpool office, surrounded by excellent amenities. Candidates must be willing to travel to the Blackpool office a minimum of once a quarter. Please note that this post does require weekend and bank holiday working on a shift pattern basis. We will provide example shift rotas during the recruitment process, which you will need to review and confirm if it is feasible for you. If successful, the first 2 induction days will be onsite in our Blackpool office.

Must haves:

• Ability to adapt to a variety of situations that present within calls.
• Knowledge and understanding of the impact loneliness and isolation has on older people and their wellbeing.
• Experience of working as part of a team.
• Good IT literacy.
• Good communication skills, and ability to adapt communication styles.
• Excellent interpersonal skills.
• Sensitive and empathetic approach.
• Calm under pressure.

Great to haves:

• Experience of signposting in a helpline environment.
• Experience of communicating effectively with vulnerable older people.
• Knowledge of the needs of older people.
• Proficient in data entry and a working knowledge of MS Office applications.
• Knowledge of safeguarding.
• Experience of working and providing support to older people and/or previous experience of providing telephone support within a helpline environment.
• Flexible to adapt to meet service demands.

We currently require office attendance a minimum of once a quarter. You may also be asked to attend the office occasionally for training or other reasons, as required. You will be on a hybrid contract and must cover the costs of all travel to the office yourself. Our office attendance requirements will be reviewed in early 2026.

Example rotas will be provided during the recruitment process. We reserve the right to cancel interviews if shift patterns are not feasible. If successful, the first 2 days of your induction process will be in the Blackpool office.

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. CVs will be anonymised by our recruitment system when you apply for a role. Our system is unable to anonymise supporting statements. 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 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.