What we do

As well as running our membership service we have also developed a full range of ways to improve volunteering in health and social care including running Attend projects and training.

We find ways for:

• volunteers to personalise a patient’s stay in hospital. They have the time to sit and listen and can be the human face of a hospital stay that can otherwise be clinical and perhaps frightening.
• volunteers to make a hospital visit easier, even if it’s as simple as a cup of tea in a waiting room or a point in the right direction. Research shows that this type of human interaction dramatically improves the patient experience and can even improve their recovery.
• a patient to become a volunteer and in so doing greatly improve their own recovery through increased self confidence and self worth as well as by gaining practical skills that get them back into a healthy way of life.
• volunteers to not be a drain on management resources but to be an easily managed force to depend on. We train members of staff how best to manage volunteers and how to keep the relationship working.
• volunteers to raise money for hospitals and social care in their communities. They run hospital shops that not only provide a vital resource in the hospital but put their profits straight back into the hospital.
• vital services to be supported by volunteers where the health authority is stretched to its limit. This could be helping with lifts for outpatients, or first aid in rural communities, or even the transportation of blood by a volunteer motorbike fleet.
• volunteering to be safe and regulated so that at all times volunteers and those around them are working professionally and within the law. We provide insurance for volunteer groups, and carry out DBS checks when required.