Feature: We must unlock the full value of volunteers across our public sector

Mark Lever, Chief Executive at independent not-for-profit innovator Helpforce, explains how valuable volunteers are to health services and how they can be optimised. Helpforce partners with health and care organisations across the UK to accelerate the growth and impact of volunteering, focusing on co-creation with NHS Trusts and systems, and rapidly sharing insights and best practice.

We have already seen the huge power of volunteering throughout the pandemic, when local residents organised to support elderly or vulnerable neighbours. We also saw thousands of volunteers support the vaccination programme. Now we must unlock that power to combat exceptional challenges ahead and build the resilience and connectivity of our communities.

We know that people stand ready to help. Individuals want to support their community and help their hard-pressed local public services – and we have public services that could benefit from their help. What is stopping us from realising this value?

Health and care services are struggling to cope with staff shortages at every level – and patients face waiting months or even years for care and support. In a recent survey for NHS Confederation, 99% of healthcare leaders agreed there is a social care workforce crisis in their area and almost all said it is worse now than it was 12 months ago. Similar pressures exist across the public sector, with critical services under threat.

These challenges are complex and require multiple solutions, but harnessing the power of volunteering is an essential part of the answer. Volunteering should be integral to all public services. By involving local people, volunteering can help to deliver more effective, people-centred services, along with improving outcomes for citizens.

It is a little-known fact that volunteers are already playing a vital role in supporting people at home as they wait for NHS care at a time of record waiting lists. Helpforce, a charity which exists to maximise volunteering to its full potential, is supporting five Waiting Well pilots across England. These projects connect volunteers with patients to provide a range of services to make their wait more comfortable; from therapeutic wellbeing and health coaching to nutrition support and falls prevention.

Currently, four out of every five patients do not receive any support while they wait for treatment – which can mean the need for more complicated surgery, worse outcomes, increased use of medication and increased anxiety. So Waiting Well volunteers are vital in reducing pressures on GPs and social care.

In Bradford, 700 people are already benefiting from a ‘Living well’ project run by Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust and supported by Helpforce. It is bringing together individuals with common goals and interests into volunteer-led group activities across the community to support their health and wellbeing. It is respected as an integrated approach to uniting and empowering local communities to strengthen their wellbeing. The service has grown to be available throughout Bradford district, and is now being scaled across the local integrated care system.

These are just two community based examples of the positive impact of volunteering on health and wellbeing. Volunteers are consistently proven to improve outcomes for patients, staff and the system. For example, volunteers have been shown to free up almost 30 minutes per nurse per day in NHS Trusts, enabling them to support more patients. And volunteers speed up patient discharge, creating more space for urgent hospital care while settling people back into their homes more quickly.

Volunteers provide important complementary assistance for public sector staff. For patients or the public, volunteers provide practical and emotional support, and connections into the community and services. For volunteers themselves, it provides purpose and builds skills and confidence.

A recent report by The King’s Fund found evidence of support for volunteering in all acute and ambulance trusts, and in the majority of specialist, mental health, and community trusts. However, it also identified that current approaches to volunteering and recruiting volunteers mean that volunteering in NHS trusts is currently unlikely to be open to everyone. Trusts may be contributing to ongoing inequalities in volunteering, restricting the recruitment of volunteers who are representative of their local communities. This means that Trusts miss out on benefiting from the resources and skills that exist within those communities.

The King’s Fund called on national bodies and organisations supporting volunteering in the NHS to take specific actions to enhance progress. A key component of this is ensuring that policy aims align with and support a shift from simply what volunteers can do to outlining a clear purpose for volunteering, reflecting the different ways in which volunteering can add value.

When it is well-designed, properly resourced and managed, volunteering has huge potential to achieve system-level change and unlock huge value to public services. Yet far too many public services are currently missing out on this massive untapped value. We need a change in mindset, so that volunteering is prioritised across many more health, care and community settings. The momentum around volunteering is building – as we are witnessing through our Back to Health campaign, which is bringing together hospital based care and community support across the UK to unleash the full potential of volunteering and scale up those initiatives with greatest potential. But volunteering is still undervalued or under-resourced in too many settings.

We must look beyond the emergency response role of volunteers and to embed volunteer services as part of our ‘business as usual’ approach to ensuring more resilient communities.

Photos by blueocar and Hush Naidoo Jade Photography