Insight & Impact service helped Barts expand their volunteer service
Tags: Case Study, I&I
28th November 2023
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Thanks to extensive support and collaboration with Helpforce, Barts Health NHS Trust developed an agile and responsive volunteer service that can be scaled across other NHS trusts. The active response volunteer service can support many different departments, and volunteers at Barts are now deployed to areas of the hospital that need the most support.
But how did they do it?
The challenge
Barts Health NHS Trust has 17,000 staff and delivers care for 2.5 million people in east London. Five hospitals are spread across a large area with different treatment specialisms to reflect diverse community needs. One hospital receives a lot of trauma-related injuries from gun and knife crime whilst another is a specialist in cardiac and cancer treatment.
Nancy Whiskin, Head of Volunteering at the Trust, said: “Our trust is one of the busiest in the UK and it means that help from volunteers could make a great difference to staff and patients. Before 2020, our volunteering service had only three members of staff to support them. It was a huge challenge to meet the care demands. In addition, hospital staff often didn’t understand how volunteers could support patients and clinicians.
“It was clear to us that we needed to raise awareness of the roles of volunteers within the organisation and make a strong business case for investment in the team’s infrastructure, so that we could make a bigger impact.”
She continued: “There was a disconnect between the volunteer service and clinicians. Patients could be asleep and ward staff weren’t clear on what the volunteers could do. Volunteers would say 'There’s nothing for me to do', and that just couldn’t be the case because at Barts there is always something to do! Volunteers can save staff time and reduce the number of late or cancelled appointments. I knew we needed to evidence this with data, but at that point, I wasn’t sure where to start.”