At Time for Health’s national debate (Thursday 9th Oct), panel and audience agreed that the future NHS must have volunteers at its heart but there was extensive debate about how this would be possible.
The four members of the panel and the audience debated the challenges facing volunteering including how to integrate volunteers with paid NHS staff and how to ensure volunteering was inclusive and representative of communities.
Panel member Carolyn Heaney, from the Department of Health, said:
“This debate reflects the rich tapestry of opinion and experience that the department is able to draw from as it develops a volunteering strategy and shows how important it is that we all work together.
“The future of volunteering in health cannot be planned in darkened rooms but is about us all coming together to ensure the future health service has volunteers as part of its DNA.”
The Audrey Emerton debate was held at the Carisbrooke Hall, London, with a panel made up of Carolyn Heaney, Department of Health; Mike Locke, Volunteering England; Becki Cullen, Scope; and Nicci Dickins, Make It Happen.
Becki Cullen, from Scope, spoke of the importance of making volunteering inclusive. She said:
“Scope’s overall aim is to further establish, maintain and support the development of varied, fully inclusive and meaningful volunteering opportunities for disabled people across the Health and Social Care sector.
“If you open up volunteering for disabled people then you open it up for everyone and that’s how we will get a worthwhile health service for the future. I want to see everyone accessing their right and responsibility to express their citizenship through volunteering. Disabled people included.”
Mike Locke, from Volunteering England, reported they had identified 110 different volunteering roles in the health service. He said:
“Volunteering and health can go hand in hand, each making the other better, but there are challenges for this relationship to work effectively that it is all of our responsibility to overcome.
“We need to put adequate resources into managing volunteers, not only so that volunteers can be effective in their current roles but so that they have a good enough experience to go on and volunteer again.”
He also spoke of the need for more research to analyse levels of volunteering and assess the impacts. He said that at a national level, research studies could draw together local studies and build on Volunteering England’s pilot studies assessing the impacts of volunteers in NHS trusts.
Nicci Dickins, from Make It Happen, spoke of the success of applying a social enterprise approach that she felt could be the future for volunteering, she said:
“Social enterprise offers health and social care organisations the opportunity to deliver high quality services in ways that are flexible, non-bureaucratic and have the potential to deliver good value for money.
“In the current financial climate and with increasing pressure for organisations to deliver contracts within strict service levels, will an approach to volunteering that embraces social enterprise models be the future?”
The debate was chaired by Lynne Berry, OBE, Chief Executive of the WRVS, who said:
“If the health service doesn’t involve volunteers and isn’t inclusive then it isn’t world class. It’s all about the people with passion to make the services the very best that they can be – both volunteers and paid staff.
“The Audrey Emerton debate and the Time for Health partnership ensure that our voices will get louder, that we can strive for a world class health service and that we can continue to put volunteering at the heart of the future NHS.”
The debate is held annually by Time for Health in recognition of the important role that Baroness Audrey Emerton has played in promoting the essential role of volunteers in health and social care services.
The debate provides an opportunity for health care professionals, volunteer managers, leaders of local health and social care organisations and grassroots volunteers to come together and consider the future of volunteering in the NHS.