Patient Advice & Liaison Service working closely with volunteers, many of whom are service users Recruitment
There are around 700 volunteers working for East Kent, aged from sixteen years old to almost ninety. Not all of these volunteers are within the mental health field but East Kent NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust has service level agreements for primary care trusts and they provide volunteers in community hospitals and health promotion. East Kent NHS are also responsible for setting up and managing the Public Advice and Liaison Services (PALS) in three of the in-patient sites as well as linking into the local community.
Volunteers are recruited in various ways. The PALS co-ordinator in Mental Health, Janet Lloyd, talks at the Women’s Institute and leaflets are distributed in libraries and roadshows. There is also a health promotion bus, and the Trust works closely with the volunteer bureaux.
Volunteer Profile
The organisation has a long history of volunteer input, from when the area had a large psychiatric hospital and the voluntary services worked with this 30 years ago. Many of the volunteers are service users who have encountered mental health problems at some time in their lives, or are people who are, or have been, carers of people who’ve suffered mental ill health. Many of these people want to ‘put something back’ into the Trust. We try very hard to break down the stigmas surrounding mental health but it would be naïve to say that there wasn’t still a huge stigma surrounding [it].
Elderly in-patients can be in the Trust for quite a while, so often relatives become part of the provision of care.
School children and university students also volunteer with the Trust. Sixteen year olds regularly complete work experience, and students doing psychology and social care courses often volunteer to bolster their CVs and to increase their skill base before going into the job market. Local churches are also very supportive and there have been a number of volunteer chaplains in the Trust church.
Many of the best volunteers start off as work experience students, and a number of volunteers go into paid employment.
Just when we get a good volunteer they go and get a job!
Screening volunteers
Different mental health trusts screen volunteers in different ways, although there are core elements to checks. At East Kent all volunteers fill in a form during the course of a face-to face interview and the Trust takes up two written references before placing volunteers. If someone is till a service user and still has a key worker or a consultant, written permission is obtained from the consultant or key worker to say that it is conducive to their mental health to do voluntary work. If a consultant feels it is detrimental to their mental health, they are not permitted to carry out voluntary work. If a member of staff carrying out an interview has any concerns, the form has a facility for requesting a second interview. Police checks are only carried out where volunteers are working with a particularly vulnerable group, for example people with learning disabilities or the elderly (there are currently no children’s services at the mental health Trust). Volunteers are always accompanied by staff when working with vulnerable clients.
Training and support
Every volunteer is informed about the policies of the Trust at the interview, and confidentiality is given special emphasis. All must sign to say that they have understood and accepted these policies.
Ongoing support varies from volunteer to volunteer as some may require support on a daily basis, whereas others may have a network of staff support in the area in which they are volunteering. Training in listening skills and body language is given to prevent volunteers becoming involved in potentially threatening situations, but additional training is difficult to provide due to lack of funding, and the fact that volunteers are spread over a large geographical distance, which is both urban and rural. There is a strong feeling that policy information should be developed using carer and service user involvement and that information should be disseminated across other mental health trusts to prevent duplication of work.
Services
East Kent and Social Care Partnership Trust are involved in the ‘Locality Planning & Monitoring Groups’ which are a cross-section of employees of the Trust, non-statutory service providers, carers and service users, and often needs will be highlighted at these meetings.
It’s a mixture of needs being identified by the service users and by the staff, but equally, if someone comes forward with a talent or special gift then we would do our best to incorporate that somewhere in the Trust.
There is also a befriending service for those who do not have visitors, and volunteers help with a variety of activities such as feeding and ‘diversional therapy’, such as playing games and quizzes. Volunteers also help out with driving and at breastfeeding clinics.
Recruitment for a ‘meet and greet’ service is currently underway at three of the in-patient clinics. As these are not as busy as the Acute Trust, staff need to ensure that the volunteers will not be bored, so plans are in place to encourage volunteers to work in pairs for no more than two hours at a time, filling out information data if the ‘meet and greet’ service is quiet.
In all three of the in-patient sites volunteers manage and run a recreational space which occurs out of hours and weekends. There are music groups, craft groups, exercises for chair-bound and able-bodied people and therapeutic hand massage. There are also shops on two sites and a comfort trolley for patients who are unable to leave the site under a section of the Mental Health Act. The recreational space is seen as particularly beneficial as it is open to recently discharged people living in the community. If people begin to feel unwell and need support, they can return to talk to volunteers and the recreational space co-ordinators, which may help prevent a recurring episode.
Management Issues
There can be some reticence among staff when a service is first set up. This may be because staff fear their already high workload is likely to increase by having to train volunteers. Groundwork has to be carried out to ensure that staff are aware how volunteers will carry out a service, and volunteers need to know their boundaries.
I think they realise that little bit of input at the beginning provides them with a huge bonus down the line.
Reorganisation of Trusts can be extremely confusing to volunteers and service users. PALS from different Trusts often need to discuss individual cases in order to maintain a seamless service for users, for example when property is lost from one hospital to another and individuals involved are not aware of the distinction between Trusts. In such a fast changing environment, it is up to managers of volunteers to make sure that volunteering remains on the agenda and that senior board members are aware of the contribution from volunteers, and that they are protected from any difficulties arising from reorganisation and an increasing number of new initiatives.
You can’t keep trying to set up services on the backs of volunteers. [You] can’t use them as a cheap option. They should be the extra, they shouldn’t be what the service is dependent on…. They need to be fully resourced and it’s not free.
For more information contact:
Janet Lloyd
Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) Co-ordinator (Mental Health)
East Kent NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust
Littlebourne Road
Canterbury
Kent
CT1 1AZ
Tel: 01227 812020
