A day in the life at Glass Door: Meet Corin

I’m Corin, and I’m the Volunteering and Involvement Manager at Glass Door Homeless Charity.   

I look after all things volunteering; we have volunteer roles supporting our frontline services (the night shelters and casework service), as well as volunteer roles that support us behind the scenes (remote translation and office volunteers). All our volunteers are hugely important, and it’s a pleasure getting to work with so many dedicated people who share our mission to end homelessness in London.  

The ‘Involvement’ aspect of my role is about involving those with lived experience of homelessness in our work, and making sure their insights and feedback inform what we do.  

Here is an example of a day in my life as Volunteering and Involvement Manager.  

Supporting our night shelter volunteers 

A key part of my day for most of the year is supporting our night shelter volunteers and coordinators. Night shelter volunteers prepare and serve food to our guests, set up the space for dinner, and chat with guests to make them feel welcome.  

It’s important our volunteers understand what our guests may have experienced and are trauma informed when speaking with guests, so I make sure all volunteers are equipped and prepared, through training and resources. Today, I’m editing our Volunteer Handbook to make sure it’s up to date. Other things I tend to do in this area are setting up training in food hygiene and organising food donations for the volunteers to cook with.  

I’m also making some calls today to our volunteer coordinators, checking they have everything they need to lead their team of volunteers so that each night shelter evening goes smoothly.  

My job changes quite a bit depending on if the night shelters are currently running or not; outside of the winter night shelter season I might spend a day analysing the volunteer survey results for feedback, or starting to plan the upcoming winter season from summer onwards, including supporting any church venues to recruit and prepare their team of volunteers, or interviewing for night shelter staff.  

I’m not doing this today, but from November – April I do lots of visits to our night shelters in the evenings, either to meet volunteers and see their efforts in action, or to chat to guests and get feedback about how we can improve.

Being in the services we deliver and speaking with guests, as well as chatting with volunteers, always reinforces how my work contributes to what we do.  

Supporting our casework volunteers 

Volunteers also help our other key service, casework. Our triage volunteers support caseworkers at some of our partner day centres by assessing what guests need assistance with, signposting them to other services, and helping caseworkers work out the best order for their appointments to make sure the most urgent situations are dealt with first.  

Today, I am speaking with a potential new triage volunteer on the phone to find out more about if their skills and experience would be suitable for the role. If they are a good fit, I will invite them into the office, where I’ll deliver an in-person casework triage volunteer training for them. 

I’m in the office today, and there is a volunteer who is organising donations and restocking supplies for the shelters. I’m making sure that she knows what she’s doing and am on hand if she has any questions.  

I'm also liaising with our translation volunteers about translating some guest materials, so that we can share key information with guests in their preferred language. In a few months I will need their help with translating our guest survey feedback from those who have answered questions in a language other than English.  

I’m also spending a bit of time today drafting the next monthly volunteering e-newsletter, which I use to keep volunteers informed about the impact our services are having, and share guest stories, volunteering opportunities, and other ways to support us. Most days too I respond to inquiries from people wanting to volunteer with us (although we’re lucky that we don’t need to recruit many new volunteers as we have a large volunteer network already!) 

Working with the Lived Experience Group 

This afternoon, we have our Lived Experience Group coming in, who meet five times a year. Each member of the group has experienced homelessness themselves, and between them cover a wide variety of experiences, including sofa-surfing, sleeping rough, staying in temporary accommodation and in refuges. 

We meet to get their feedback on any changes to our services, as well as on other areas of our work such as the website, policy, fundraising and casework. In the past year, the lived experience group coproduced with us our refreshed Theory of Change, helped us improve the language in our text messages to night shelter guests, and contributed to the design of our mailbox service for guests.  

The meetings always involve pizza and catching up, and it’s one of my favourite bits of my job.

Hearing about the group’s experiences, and how their consequent insights are often things we may not have thought of, reinforce how important lived experience is in making sure what we are doing is useful and effective for the people we support. Also, they are all lovely and it’s always great to have them at the office!