In West Yorkshire, we believe volunteering makes a valuable contribution to health and care. It directly contributes to our ambitions to create opportunities to become an active citizen, gain experience and potentially move into work; strengthen system resilience; improve patient experience and health and well-being outcomes.
With an estimated 132,213 volunteers in the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector alone and based on nationally estimated distribution of volunteers across sectors, around a further 22,440 volunteers in West Yorkshire in the public sector (McGarvey et al 2020), volunteers make a substantial contribution to health and care.
Our ambition as an Integrated Care System (ICS) is to offer the right opportunity, in the right place, at the right time to anyone who wants to volunteer in the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership.
We recognise that across West Yorkshire, organisations and sectors have developed volunteering in different ways, and we want to build on this, aligning approaches to volunteering and working more collaboratively. Through greater collaboration, sharing learning and resources, offering more inclusive pathways into volunteering and potentially into work, and building on good practice, our ambition is to contribute to system wide workforce transformation – including current workforce challenges, patient and volunteer experience, health and well-being outcomes for those experiencing the greatest health inequalities and building system resilience. Our ambition for our volunteers is that each of them receive the right training and development, support and supervision, and that volunteering is fulfilling and meaningful.
We believe that by working together as a collaborative of West Yorkshire volunteering leaders (our West Yorkshire Integrated Volunteering Approaches Group) we are stronger, and have the potential to accelerate change across the ICS, building on the potential that exists, maximising resources and improving outcomes. We are able to test approaches and innovation across sectors and organisations, and work with a more diverse range of volunteers including those with lived experience, from areas of deprivation and from different population groups. The different experiences, strengths and skills each partner brings creates a rich and varied foundation for a West Yorkshire wide approach.
Our West Yorkshire Integrated Volunteering Approaches Group has already led the development of a set of Volunteer Principles and our West Yorkshire Integrated Volunteering Strategy.
Our ambition as we work to deliver our strategy is greater collaboration across our ICS which improves health outcomes, has a positive impact on volunteer experience, creates volunteer to career pathways, strengthens inclusion and diversity, and builds resilience across our West Yorkshire Health and Care system.
Not so much! Volunteer numbers are not recovering after the pandemic and new pressures on time are emerging.
There isn't a "volunteer army" waiting on short notice to meet needs. Volunteer opportunities need to be thought through.
Volunteers need support systems and value! Supporting them properly takes resources, expertise, and time.
Because it's central to tackling so many health and social care challenges, we have our finest minds working on it. Hospitals, the ambulance service, charities and community groups together as the Integrated Volunteering Approaches (IVA) Group.
We are developing an ICS-wide approach from the ground up. Email catherine.jowitt@bdct.nhs.uk for more information.
Agree the how The ICS-wide principles are on the website – includes what good looks like, how systems should look and feel, plus much more.
Sort the what and why The strategy sets out what we want to achieve – this will help us all speak with confidence.
Be more inclusive/flexible How can we understand people better? Remove barriers? How do volunteers move across organisations/sectors?
We need to look after the ecosystem. Retaining and developing the volunteers we have.
80 percent of VCSE organisations in West Yorkshire couldn’t keep going without them.
As around 60 percent are service users or people with lived experience, volunteers have irreplaceable know-how.
