Standby Pet Welfare Assistant

Standby Pet Welfare Assistant

Final date to receive applications: 18 January 2026

Department: Rehoming & Fostering Services

Employment Type: Contract / Temp

Location: Manchester

Reporting To: Stephanie Wood

Compensation: £13.69 / hour

Contract: Zero hours contract

Salary: £13.69 per hour

Location: Manchester

Closing date: Sunday 18th January 2026

Interview date: W/C 26th January 2026

We’re recruiting a Standby
Pet Welfare Assistant for offsite animal care, for our Rehoming & Fostering team in Manchester!

At Blue Cross, we're dedicated to providing the best care possible to pets in need. As a Pet Welfare Assistant for our foster services and home direct, 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.

As a Pet Welfare Assistant - Offsite 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.

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 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.

You will be on a zero hour’s contract and therefore you will not have regular hours of work but will be on standby to work shifts as and when required.

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. Our team need to work quickly to help pets and a key element required is strong administrative experience.

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.

Click the apply button below and complete the online application process before the closing date on Sunday 18th January 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:

• Programmes for physical and mental wellbeing support.
• Free access to GP via Met Life – 24/7 GP services, private prescriptions and more for you and your family.
• Pension scheme with enhanced employer contribution.
• 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.