If you already give your time to Alone, the ICA, Active Retirement, a parish committee or another community group — Here2Help bookings are paid, structured, vetted work doing exactly what you already do. €30–€60 per booking, on your own schedule, alongside the volunteering you keep.
Every community in Ireland has people who already give their time to elders. They drop in on a neighbour every Tuesday. They drive the same older woman to Mass every Sunday. They sit with someone in the day hospice. They're the volunteers behind Alone's Befriending service, the ICA's older members, parish lift schemes, GAA elder support funds, and a hundred other quiet networks that hold Irish communities together.
That work is brilliant. We are not trying to replace it. But many of those same volunteers are also working part-time, retired on tight budgets, between jobs, or simply at a stage where a little extra income would help — and the skills they've built doing the free work are exactly what we need.
So: Here2Help bookings sit alongside your volunteering. You keep helping the same neighbour for free. You take a paid Here2Help booking when one comes up nearby. Same impulse, different relationship. We pay you because the family pays us; nothing is taken from the volunteer ecosystem.
The work is similar. The structure is different — and that's the point.
The family asks for the help and pays in advance. The patient knows you're coming, knows you've been vetted, knows you've been chosen. No awkward "are you sure you don't want anything?" at the end.
A booking has a defined start, finish, and scope. €30 for a 2-hour discharge, €45 for 4 hours, €60 for up to 8. You're not committing to ongoing care — just this booking.
We check the address. We confirm the discharge with the hospital where needed. We hold liability cover. You don't carry the worry that volunteer drivers sometimes do.
Fee shown on every booking before you accept. Paid every Friday by bank transfer. Year-end summary for tax. No tip cultures, no awkward envelopes.
Not unless you let it. Most of our volunteer-background companions take one or two Here2Help bookings a week, alongside the volunteering they already do. You set your own availability — pause for a week, a month, a season, no questions asked. We don't believe paid work should compete with the free work that holds communities together. It should sit next to it.
If anything, the structure can help. Volunteer roles often expand without notice — a casual lift to the doctor becomes a weekly commitment. Here2Help bookings are bounded: one trip, fixed scope, finished. For many of our companions, that bounded structure is a relief.