Contract: Permanent, full time, 37.5 hours per week

Salary: £24,976 per annum

Location: Hitchin, SG4 8EU

Closing date: Wednesday 25th November 2026

1st stage interview dates: 1st & 2nd December 2026

2nd stage animal handling assessment: 8th - 10th December 2026

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

At Blue Cross, we're dedicated to providing the best care possible for 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 off-site care.

Our Hertfordshire rehoming centre, based in Kimpton, originally opened in the 1940s and have facilities for dogs, cats and small pets. Our newly refurbished facilities include 20 kennels, five puppy pens and 29 cat pens, which includes a mother and kitten unit. We also have indoor rabbit space and rooms for small pets.

Our dedicated Rehoming & Fostering team, supported by an incredible network of volunteers, helps pets and people across Hertfordshire and beyond. The team plays a vital role in finding loving new homes for pets through both centre-based adoptions and our Home Direct scheme, which allows pets to remain in a home environment while they wait to be adopted. By working closely with adopters, owners and foster carers, the team helps ensure every pet has the best possible chance of finding the right home.

Responsibilities

As a Pet Welfare Assistant - Off-site Services, you will be responsible for expertly managing a specific number of pet cases within the off-site pet care service, these can be rehoming pets in foster care or Home Direct service or pets in temporary crisis care.

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 off-site 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.

At our Hertfordshire rehoming centre, we provide onsite accommodation for pets in our care 24/7. Overnight shifts are usually undertaken by team members who live on site. Occasionally, you will be expected to carry out night checks or stay in onsite accommodation overnight when the resident team members are either not working or away for a period of time.

This is a full-time role working 37.5 hours per week on a two-week rota which includes every other weekend:

Week one: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday & Sunday

Week two: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday

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.

Skills

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. 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 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.

The first stage of the recruitment process will be a competency-based interview via Microsoft Teams. Candidates who are successful at this stage will be invited to attend a second-stage practical animal handling assessment on-site at our Hertfordshire rehoming centre.

How to apply

Click the apply button below and complete the online application process before the closing date.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early should we receive an overwhelming response.

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.

Please read our guidance on using AI when applying to Blue Cross before submitting your application.

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

To read more about the benefits Blue Cross has to offer, please visit the 'why work for us' page on our website.