VCSE Collaborative team showcase Volunteering for Health Programme to over 100 NHS Volunteer Services Managers at a national conference
Gary Sainty, Head of VCSE and Susanna Glover, Strategic Volunteer Lead, from our Humber and North Yorkshire Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Collaborative team, were joined by Rachael Hardcastle-Pearce, Youth Health Champions and Voluntary Service Lead from Hull University Teaching Hospital NHS Trust, at the National Association of Voluntary Services Managers Conference in Birmingham in February.
The National Association of Voluntary Services Managers (NAVSM) is a membership organisation that exists to support and develop best practice in volunteer management in the NHS and Healthcare. Their annual conference draws professionals from NHS Trusts across the country to share practice and showcase the incredible work of those who support and promote volunteering to support our healthcare system.
The team were invited to share insights about:
- How our integrated care system works to support our trusts and other health and social care organisations across Humber and North Yorkshire
- Our work as a VCSE Collaborative
- The development of the Volunteering for Health programme.
Showcasing our Volunteering for Health programme
Gary and Susanna introduced Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership and the work of the VCSE Collaborative in positioning the VCSE sector as an equal partner in the design and delivery of health and care across Humber and North Yorkshire.
The VCSE sector is largely an untapped resource in keeping people well and out of hospital, as well as playing a huge role to play in addressing inequalities, as they are often embedded and trusted by communities. Volunteers support a lot of this work, for example in hospital discharge services, social prescribing, frailty services, and children and young people.
Susanna spoke about her role in the Volunteering for Health programme; bringing together different partners across our health and social care system to look at the barriers and opportunities offering a greater range of 16+ youth volunteering opportunities.
The programme aims to engage with young people at a time when they’re starting to think about a career in health and social care. We have some incredible examples in our area and we’re keen to facilitate system collaboration to recognise different partners as equal parts of the puzzle and building on our strengths.
Humber Health Champions Youth Volunteering Programme
One example of the incredible work taking place in Humber and North Yorkshire is the Humber Health Champions Youth Volunteering Programme. Rachael shared how youth volunteers have been established and embedded at Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (HUTH) over the past 10 years.
The Humber Health Champions Youth Volunteering Programme has helped launch the careers of over 2,700 young people since its inception 10 years ago. It gives young people aged between 16 and 25 the opportunity to gain experience in different health roles in clinical settings through volunteering. This gives them insights and experience they can’t get in a classroom, builds their confidence and skills, and helps them make decisions about the next steps in their career. Importantly, it helps inspire the next generation of healthcare professionals.
Watch the ‘Young Health Champions’ video to see just one of the examples of Youth Volunteering in our area.
What’s next?
This month we’re kicking off our trusts development project where we’ll explore how learnings might be translated between acute, mental health and ambulance Trusts. This will give us lots of learnings on how bringing together different parts of the system can generate new ideas and provide support, which we’d love to share at next year’s conference!
What the audience said…
Catherine, a Voluntary Service Manager (VSM) from a mental health trust shared her reflections on the session:
“Hearing Gary and Susanna speak about the Volunteering for Health Youth Volunteering project really re-iterated to me how lucky we are to have this collaboration and additional support network as we try to develop our services to incorporate Youth Volunteering.
“I spoke to a few other VSM’s at the event and they were amazed at the work going on within our local ICB to support Volunteers and bring different Trusts and healthcare sectors together. Many of them had never really worked with their own ICB/ICS at all and had no understanding of it. They were impressed by the Youth Volunteering project and commented on how it can have a really positive impact if everybody locally works towards the same goal, not only improving Youth volunteering but also building positive relationships within the group for future collaborations.”
Rachael absolutely brims with enthusiasm for her Youth Volunteering project and it’s infectious. It’s amazing to see the positive impact the project has had on the young people in the community and also their Trust. The project has flourished and grown at HUTH, and the model clearly works really well in an acute hospital environment. A few VSM’s in mental health trusts commented that it looked amazing, but they had doubts about whether it would work as well in a mental health trust. Overall, it was really inspiring to see how a project like this can make such a huge impact.”
Find out more about the VCSE Collaborative’s work on our website or by joining our FutureNHS workspace.