Pet Welfare Assistant - Off-site Services

Blue Cross; Manchester; On-site; GBP 11,000 - 14,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

38 days holiday

Wellbeing support

Health cash plan

Pension scheme

Professional CPD support

Job summary

Blue Cross is seeking a Pet Welfare Assistant for its off-site services in Greater Manchester. The role supports rehoming and fostering, focusing on pet welfare and helping pets find loving homes through Home Direct and foster care.

The part-time position averages 18.75 hours per week with a two-week rota that includes Sundays and some weekend shifts, offering meaningful work and opportunities to impact pets and families in the community.

Qualifications

• Empathy and a focus on animal welfare.
• Experience in a welfare or animal-related setting preferred.
• Strong communication and customer service abilities.
• Good organisational and administrative skills, including basic computer use.
• Must have a valid driving licence.

Responsibilities

• Manage a defined number of pet cases within offsite care (rehoming & Home Direct).
• Ensure welfare standards and rehabilitation plans are followed in foster homes.
• Assess pets for new homes and expedite assessments to speed up matching.
• Provide excellent customer service as the public-facing side of Blue Cross in offsite services.

Skills

Empathy

Animal welfare knowledge

Communication skills

Customer service

Organisational skills

Full driving licence

Job description

Pet Welfare Assistant - Off-site Services

Application Deadline: 24 November 2026

Department: Rehoming & Fostering Services

Employment Type: Permanent - Part Time

Location: Manchester

Reporting To: Assistant Manager - Off-site Services

Compensation: £12,488 / year

Description

Contract: Permanent, part-time, 18.75 hours per week

Salary: £12,488 per annum (FTE £24,976 per annum)

Location: Radcliffe, Greater Manchester

Closing date: Tuesday 24th November 2026

Interview date: Thursday 3rd & Friday 4th December 2026

We’re recruiting a Pet Welfare Assistant for off-site animal care, for our Rehoming & Fostering team in Radcliffe!

Since opening our high street centre in Radcliffe in 2018, we've been proud to support pets and people across our local community and beyond. Rather than housing animals onsite, many of the pets we help stay with their current owners through our Home Direct scheme or are looked after by our experienced volunteer foster carers. This allows pets to remain in a caring home environment while they wait for their forever families. Although the role doesn't typically involve daily animal care, you'll be making a real difference by helping pets find suitable homes and supporting people when they need it most.

At Blue Cross, we're dedicated to providing the best care possible to pets in need. As a Pet Welfare Assistant for our off-site 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.

More about the role

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.

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.

This is part-time role working an average of 18.75 hours per week on a two week rota which will include weekends and public holidays.

Week one: Sunday, Monday

Week two: Monday, Wednesday & Saturday

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.

About 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 computer 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.

Using AI in your application

We’re happy for you to use AI tools to help you prepare your application, for example to organise your thoughts, improve clarity or check spelling and grammar. However, your application must be an honest reflection of your own skills, experience and achievements, and AI should not be used to write your application for you or create examples that aren’t your own.

Blue Cross benefits

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