On 6th April 2009, the Department for Work and Pensions launched a volunteering brokerage scheme across England aimed at providing 34,000 volunteering placements in the UK over the following two years. The scheme hopes to help the long term unemployed to develop work based skills through volunteering.
Delivery of the DWP brokerage scheme is through a partnership of four national partners: The British Trust for Conservation volunteers (BTCV), Community Service Volunteers (CSV), v and Volunteering England. BTCV are the accountable body to DWP, as they are the only one of the partners who is a DWP approved provider. The scheme will be delivered by Volunteer Development Scotland and Wales Council for Voluntary Action in Scotland and Wales so the information below relates to England only.
‘Customers’ for the scheme are referred to brokers through Job Centre Plus advisors. This means that England is divided into forty districts aligning to Job Centre Plus location. Each of the national partners is leading on delivery in one of these regions.
At present, more people than anticipated are expressing an interest and being interviewed about potential volunteering placements.
Currently, there are over 100 Volunteer Centres involved in delivery of the scheme, in areas managed by Volunteering England and v. In areas where Volunteering England is leading VCs have earned around £120,000 of new income. (Up to September 2009)
Details of the scheme
Volunteering England has a number of resources and further information for Volunteer Centres, which are available in the Volunteer Centres members area.
National organisations that wish to participate in the scheme by providing opportunities, can apply to become national placement providers for the programme. BTCV will undertake all of the necessary checks to enable them to provide placements across England. Please contact BTCV at
DWP-Volunteering@btcv.org.uk.
Details of local brokers can be found here.
For further information about the scheme, please contact: vbs@volunteeringengland.org
For press enquiries please contact Kimberley Rowley on: Kimberley.Rowley@volunteeringengland.org.
