5. Should our organisation be reimbursing care costs to volunteers?

As with all expenses, there is no legal requirement for you to reimburse someone's care costs. However, if you do not you will be excluding parents with pre-school children and people caring for an adult from volunteering for you. At present many organisations will not even consider reimbursing care expenses because of the costs involved, and because the arrangements seem overly complex. Given the number of carers in the community, this means that there are many skilled people with valuable life experiences who may want to volunteer but can not. Under all definitions of 'reasonable out-of-pocket expenses', care costs are included. It is absolutely fine to reimburse receipted care costs, and this will have no minimum wage implications and no effect on volunteer's benefits.