Department of Health – consultation towards a volunteering strategy
The Department of Health aims to identify the key actions needed to address the perceived obstacles to volunteering in health and social care and creating a refreshed vision for volunteering in health and social care.
The consultation will run until 30 September 2008, with a view to publication of a final strategy and implementation plan in early 2009.
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Consultations/DH_085186
Volunteering England will be developing its own response but urges members to respond independently, or through your Regional England Volunteering Development Council.
Assessing the Impact of Volunteering in the NHS
This has meant the evaluation of the volunteering service in six NHS Trusts, a summary of the findings and a ‘how to go about yourself’ guide.
The individual Trust evaluations are on the Volunteering England website and the final reports will be published in July when they will also be available on our website.
Two of the Trusts who took part – Nottinghamshire Health Care Trust and Luton and Dunstable Hospital – talked about their experiences at the Volunteering Convention in Newcastle last April.
If you’d like to know more about the individual Trusts and what they learned from the process please approach them directly – contact details are within each individual report.
National Blood Service (NBS) Case Study
Themes:
- Volunteers groups and responsibilities
- Recruitment & Profile
- Support and management
- Volunteer’s testimony
The National Blood Service (NBS) is an integral part of the NHS, and guarantee to deliver blood, blood components, blood products and tissues from 15 blood centers to anywhere in England and North Wales.
Naturally, the organisation also ensures that the blood supplied is properly screened and is safe for patients.
Every year 2.1 million blood donations are collected, tested, processed and stored. The NBS depend entirely on voluntary donations from the general public, and try to encourage existing donors to give three times a year.
The NBS also have a number of other functions such as continually carrying out new research into improving the safety of blood and new ways it can be used to help save more lives.
Specialist medical advices are also provided and clinical support to hospitals, as well as educating and training transfusion medicine specialists.
Volunteers groups and responsibilities
Local Organiser Volunteers help organise and promote blood donor sessions and can become the National Blood Service representative in their local area.
Responsibilities include:
- Keeping the NBS up to date with any local events or developments
- Encouraging new donors and get existing ones to attend sessions
- Distributing posters and leaflets with all the details about when and where the
local sessions will be:
- Helping at the session, with brochures and leaflets
Poster Contact Volunteers:
Responsibilities include:
- Putting posters or banners up locally just before a blood donor session and remove them after the session.
Office volunteers
This involves helping centre's team organise donor sessions.
Responsibilities include:
- Sending out posters
- Ringing round companies
- Writing to companies
- Giving people appointment times
- Answering any queries from donors Student Rep Volunteer helps to promote and organise a blood donor session at his or her University or College and is the day-to-day NBS representative on campus. Responsibilities include:
- Encouraging new donors to give blood
- Distributing posters, leaflets and advertising session details in student magazines
- Attending Fresher’s Fairs and, before the actual session try, to get as many new donors as possible.
Recruitment and Profile
Most of volunteers have been with the NBS for some time and they started because they were part of the Red Cross or St Johns Ambulance organisations that used to support blood donation sessions. Word-of-mouth has proven to be the best way of recruiting volunteers.
There are currently hundreds of volunteers working together on recruiting blood donors.
Most of them are retired and often members of the Red Cross. In many cases the volunteers have been helping the NBS for 20 or even 30 years.
Support and Management
The administration office contact volunteers and advice them on when sessions are being held. They are also responsible for authorising and reimbursing expenses. However, on the day volunteers are co-ordinated by the team manager.
Volunteer’s testimony
I was born on 14th October 1948, the year the NHS and the Blood transfusion service were created. If both these services had not been in place I would not have survived the complications of being born a “Rhesus” baby.
There is no doubt; I own my life to the organisations that were just starting out themselves!
As soon as I was old enough I became a blood donor and working around five pregnancies and post natal recovery have to date donated fifty two units.
In 1958, I was a guest of the Lord Mayor of London to celebrate the first gold award donors and that year on the N.B.T.S Christmas card. In 1978, I was part of a T.V campaign to encourage more blood donors; this involved showing how easy it was to donate.
For the past eight years I have been the local volunteer coordinator here in Hitchin. This involves going into schools talking to students about the work the NBS does and trying to recruit new donors as they become 17 years old.
I also run my own Health/Fitness organisation called Family Fitness and remind, encourage and advise members of session dates and times.
Maggie Hackney – Clinical Exercise Practitioner, Hitchin
Further information
North West London Marketing Department
Phone number: 0208 271 6304
Fax number: 0208 271 6301
