The Get Involved Innovation Fund provides small financial awards and advice and guidance for organisations to test new approaches to involving volunteers. It is a core part of the Volunteering for Health programme in Norfolk and Waveney. In this episode we meet Cata Parrish at Voluntary Norfolk who tells us what the fund is and what to expect from the application process. And we meet Rik Martin at Community Action Norfolk who fills us in on what support organisations can expect.

To find out more about the fund visit https://www.getinvolvedskills.org.uk/get-involved-innovation-fund

To get in touch with the Volunteering Discovery team contact nwicb.volunteering@nhs.net

Volunteering Discovery is produced by Hospital Radio Norwich for Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System.

Hello and welcome to Volunteering Discovery.

This is a podcast which takes you behind the scenes of

volunteering in health and care.

In Norfolk and Waveney volunteers enhance the experience of people accessing health

and care in a huge variety of ways in our hospitals, our communities, and even

from the comfort of their own homes.

I'm your host Sarah, a volunteer coordinator working in the NHS.

Why not subscribe to this podcast to make sure you hear all of the

upcoming episodes in the series?

In today's episode, we'll be meeting some of the team behind

the Get Involved Innovation Fund.

This forms a big part of the Volunteering for Health program in Norfolk and Wadey

that we introduced in the last episode.

First we'll be meeting Cata who will talk us through what the

Get Involved Innovation Fund is.

Then Rick will share what support will be on offer to organizations

who are awarded funding.

We'll hear Producer Jules's conversation with Cata.

First,

thank you very much for joining us today, Cata.

Can I start by asking you to introduce yourself to us?

Mm-hmm.

And your part within the Volunteering for Health program?

My name's Cata.

I manage the volunteering for Health Innovation Fund

across Norfolk and Waveney.

And what that means really is about creating systems and supporting

organizations to help address the barriers that we know certain cohorts

of, of volunteers or people who want to be volunteers will face.

But this is a new role within the Volunteering for Health program.

Was there a particular aspect about the role that encouraged you to apply

for it, that you were interested in?

Actually there was quite a lot.

I'm like really fired up by seeking out innovative approaches across communities.

Anyway, I've done that for the past 20 years or so, especially

around kind of community and environmental challenges within.

Kind of what works and what resonates on micro levels and

within different ecosystems and within different communities.

So I'm, yeah, I'm really interested in the different ways in which

people might approach, like there's always a multiplicity of approaches

that will work and it is always literally the multiplicities that

work rather than one single approach.

So that was really interesting for me.

Right now I work in com community and Environmental Resilience with

a grassroots CIC called Way Smiths.

I'm a director and a facilitator of one of the programs there.

It's a plant Allies, uh, community hub and program there.

And then more recently, I've spent a few years working in inclusive

learning, both in a support role and then teaching and course leading.

Working specifically with the cohorts that this fund is working with, seeking to

address similar barriers that people face.

So this role felt like a really good fit to me, and I felt really

excited about being in a different role within that wider circle of

participants of people of community actionists who activists organizations.

Sounds like you're

the perfect fit for the innovation fund, which is a

really exciting opportunity.

Could you tell us about the Innovation Fund, what it is, and why you think we

need it here in Norfolk and Waveney?

Yeah, so the innovation fund is.

Essentially it's, it's a pot of funding and advice and guidance to

help organizations explore new ways to make volunteering more inclusive

and more accessible, specifically for those who work with adults with

learning disabilities, autistic people.

Otherwise, neurodivergent Vogue.

And people who've been within the care system or who are a,

looked after child age 16 plus.

So that's what the fund's about.

It's about finding and supporting projects that support people from

those groups to become volunteering ready or to experience volunteering.

And the way in which it supports those groups is, like I said, is

through funding is up to 7,007, half thousand pounds worth of funding.

And also there's lots of kind of co-production opportunities.

So there's.

It's really about how can we utilize the skills and experience

of people across Norfolk and Waveney to create some innovative

approaches that might actually work.

And if an organization is interested in applying for the

fund, what is the process for them?

They can go straight to the website.

The website is www.getinvolvedskills.org.uk.

And on there is the innovation fund.

So that's what they're looking for, the Get Involved innovation fund.

And on the website, the process is really clearly set out and

at the bottom there are really clear tags that people can press.

So there's like important information.

There's the, literally the process of funding.

As a flow chart.

And then there's the expression of interest form.

And the expression of interest form is the, is the form that

they're gonna be applying via.

So they'll click on that and it'll ask some questions there around the,

the proposed project, the initial expression of interest won't be what

goes forward to the awards panel.

That's just a starting process.

Once the expression of interest comes in, it comes straight to me and then

we start having conversations, uh, between myself and the organization.

There's a whole load of co-production work and partnership

working that that begins there.

We have the conversations to make sure it fits the criteria and

that it looks strong and that it meets the needs of our cohorts.

Once we've had a number of conversations around how we make

that a bit more robust, then we send that plan over to some peer guides.

And those peer guides will be experts either in, you know, location or in

the particular cohort that original organization wants to work with,

or they might have kind of general volunteer volunteering experience.

They'll work on that together.

So the peer guide will spend some time going through it, making comments,

making any suggestions about how to make that plan more robust.

It goes back to the original organization.

And so effectively we've had this lovely co-produced plan where you've

got lots of expertise from across the counties, and then that plan

goes forward to an award channel.

Once those

applications have been received, how will they be assessed?

The awards panel are made up of people who have lots of

good professional experience.

Their decisions are, are rooted from that place.

They're rooted from their, their understanding, their knowledge of

people from those different cohorts.

And we found that actually we just had the first awards panel last week

and it was really clear how much experience and expertise there was

on the panel and they could ask.

Really pertinent questions about is this a decent person centered approach for

the cohorts that we're working with?

Does this timeframe work for people who have a GD or will this

work specifically for people who you know, for autistic people?

So those questions definitely come from, from that place of making sure

that the projects will be supportive of those people in particular.

And the kinds of questions they might be asking is, you

know, how supportive are they?

How person centered are they?

How accessible are these projects, both in terms of the recruitment and the delivery.

What's new or innovative about this?

'cause it's an innovation fund.

What are you addressing and how are you addressing that?

So those are the key questions that the awards panel are asking.

So you mentioned a DDA moment ago.

For those who aren't familiar with the acronym, could you

explain what that means, please?

Yeah, so Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention deficit Hyperactive Disorder.

There's some controversy about whether or not people would classify these as

disorders, but these are the acronyms that we are left with at the moment.

Once the successful applicants have been chosen, they've gone

through the panel and then they'll move into the delivery phase.

Is there any support that will be offered to those organizations to get started?

So what's happening now for those who've just been to the awards plat

panel and what will happen for any future organizations is the Community

Action Norfolk and Community Action Suffolk, depending on whereabouts those

projects are taking place, then step forward, they administer the grant funds.

Also, they provide the kind of guidance and support that they're

well known for, to support those organizations, to support their projects.

And also, from my perspective, I'm really, really looking forward to getting involved

with seeing what the projects are like and seeing the impact on participants

and what they're finding challenging and what they're finding really useful.

So a lot of my role at that point will be literally monitoring, monitoring

what's happening, what's working, what's not working, and then seeing

if there's anything additional that we can do to provide support.

What kind of learning are you hoping will capture

through these innovations?

So I think what we're looking for is what's working on the ground.

What have the barriers been for those particular

organizations, for those people?

Are those barriers what we're expecting?

Or is there something different that we hadn't been aware of, that we weren't,

we weren't sure was gonna happen?

What's new?

What did we not know?

What level of support is required?

What could be achieved in the timeframe.

So we had one application that came forward to us, which looked

like a really beneficial project.

We could see it would be a great project for the community, whether it can be

achieved in the timeframe and for that amount of funding was the question.

That's definitely a question that we need to be asking.

What can come out of decent co-production?

What amazing explorations or serendipitous understanding has

come outta people working together who don't normally work together?

And then I guess, what should we be supporting moving forward?

We've built up some really.

Useful pictures of what's working and what we can feed

upwards and kind of horizontally.

These projects need supporting elsewhere.

Something slightly unusual about this innovation fund is that rather

than a focus on volunteer numbers, for example, the emphasis is more on learning.

How will we know if the innovations have been successful?

The participants will tell us when I go out and speak to those projects

and speak to participants, that's what I'm interested in is what's the

difference that's being made for them?

What are they enjoying?

What are they finding challenging?

What are they not enjoying?

That's all the kind of feedback we should be after.

Also, we'll know if those volunteers have transitioned into volunteering.

That's one aspect of it.

For some projects, it's not about them being in, in volunteering yet.

It's about getting them volunteering ready.

Certainly that'll be a useful measure.

And also if those participants feel more ready, if they feel more able,

more confident in those tasks.

The intention is that we're gonna look at base levels for participants

and ask them what differences have happened for them along the way and

how those differences have occurred.

Also, moving away just from the participants, we can be

speaking to the organizations.

He'll be able to show us, you know, the successes from their partnership working.

We can log the amount of volunteering, but also the quality of

volunteering and the quality of those placements and the, and the impact.

We can log accessible resources that have been created, which hopefully could

be shared across different partners.

We can log what they've been able to address in terms of the barriers and

what difference that makes, not just for the participants, but for for their

communities in which they're working with.

You mentioned that a panel has recently met what's coming

next for the innovation fund?

We should have another round in the winter.

We're hoping November, December time because this is new, there's, there's

still lots of learning for all of us.

We are hoping to invite people to apply again in November, December.

We'd really like to see more applications from Suffolk, from from the Waveney area.

We'd really like to see more applications around, looked

after children, age 16 plus.

And some of the, um, applications that came through to us.

We'd like to see some of those come back, but with some more clarification

to make sure that our panel, who, as I said, are experts in their field,

feel reassured that the participants who are gonna be involved in those

projects that are properly safeguarded, that they kept safe and that they'll

genuinely learn and, and benefit from the projects they're involved in.

We're coming to the end of our conversation today.

Is there anything about this program, the Innovation Fund that really excites you?

Yes, there's lots that excites me about it.

Really, I think mainly because I know from my background, I know so

many of the barriers that people face in getting into volunteering.

I've worked with young people who can't access volunteering because of travel

or because of their, their feelings around travel, because of their own

health needs, which aren't always linear.

So they don't always fit into a, a kind of classic volunteering role.

Sometimes because they just, there's no extra capacity in their family

or community to provide the extra support that, that they need.

And generally, just because they have support needs, you know, and

without experience from having volunteered before, it's really hard

for them to generate experience.

We all know this when we apply for a job, if we don't have that experience,

it's really hard to get on there.

And it's the same for volunteering.

I think that's what really excites me is, is look, we can do something about this.

This is.

Exploratory.

This is not saying, you know, it has to be done in a particular way.

It's saying you guys are the experts, you are the people who work with

these cohorts, these groups of people.

You tell us it's not a massive amount of funding.

It's not meant to fund something huge.

It's meant to fund an exploration as to what might work, work well for the future,

and that feels really exciting for me.

So I've come to the end of my questions.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Anything that you think people should know about the Innovation Fund?

I think that.

We are really keen to hear from smaller organizations.

You don't have to be, you don't have to be massive.

If you've got experience of working with, with those groups, with anyone

in those groups, or if you've got, if you've got experience of good, strong

partnerships, and certainly if you are in areas that aren't massively

represented generally in the funding arena, then we'd like to hear from you.

As Cata mentioned, alongside the award of funding, the Innovation

Fund offers support for organizations from Community Action Norfolk,

and Community Action Suffolk.

To learn more about what is available, we'll meet our second guest.

Uh, my name's Rick Martin.

I am the CEO of Community Action.

Norfolk.

For people not familiar with Community Action, Norfolk

or Cam, could you tell us a bit about the organization please?

It's an infrastructure organization, but by that I mean we provide support

and uh, advice to both communities, voluntary sector, faith groups, so

basic, basically anyone who's working in a community to ensure that they

have everything they need to be the most effective, resilient organization

they can be, and to make that happen.

We also do quite a lot of projects around specific areas such as cancer, social

isolation, and a whole range of other various interesting ideas like that.

I think we're gonna find out a bit more about what that

might mean in practice shortly.

But before we get into those details, could you tell us about the role of

can within volunteering for health?

Yeah.

Um, we're primarily looking at the Innovation Fund along

with Community Action Suffolk.

We've been asked to support, provide support for those successful candidates

who identify a project that they want to deliver, uh, a preferably

an innovative volunteering project.

And our role will be to make sure that they are able to do that to

the best of their ability and that any gaps that are there are found

and helped because we know that if people are working to something new.

Very often they might not know all of the things that they could actually

have alongside it, and, but that's part of our role is as an infrastructure

organization working cross Norfolk, we're in the middle of a lot of

things we can provide that support.

For the applicants to the innovation fund, some of them

might be very small organizations.

Could you tell us what kind of support they might be able to expect

from Can the kind of activities that CAN is really skilled at,

we support a lot of organizations of all sizes.

So from one person who's literally a Facebook kind of presence to um, very

large charities across regional areas.

If you're a relatively small organization, a lot of the

things that will come up will be.

Checking that their, all of their governance and their structures

are in place so that they aren't constantly chasing for a policy

or whatever they might need.

It's making sure that they understand what other funding's available.

So they might wanna compliment what they're doing with something

out, with some additional funds.

So we help them to identify through a range of different methods,

what kind of funding is out there.

We look at how they are, uh, funding themselves to see whether they,

there are other things they could do that would make it more robust.

We'll look at, uh.

Kind of how they're, how they're planning to roll out the project that they've

been put, that they've put forward.

Because it may well be, we've seen something similar and we might have some

really good tips and be able to tell them what they can do to make it better.

We'll look at how they might assess its effectiveness.

We'll provide them with templates and information around things like

evaluation, around social impact, around how they might grow the

project, if it's really successful.

Um, and all the things that you might wanna look for.

And then we'll, we'll talk to 'em a little bit about what they do next.

Where do they go next and how do they capitalize on the

work that they've just done?

Thinking about some of the conversations that we've had about

the program and the data that's involved, I know for some organizations

the amount of data that we need to capture about the volunteers involved

will be more than they expect.

Is there support that can, is able to offer with that?

Yeah, of course there is.

Not only we can, we can help them understand how the best way to

record some of that information is.

And it may well be that they think, oh, well, we're gonna have to do lots and

lots of gathering of data and information.

But it might be that you do it really simply and, and that you incorporate

it in a feedback form that also asks a couple of extra questions.

It does kind of depend what it is they're trying to do and what the

impact of what they're trying to do is likely to be, because that's the

essence of what we want to record.

But we will look at.

Options that fit whatever it is they're trying to do best.

We will help them understand what data they probably do need to

collect and what they probably don't.

We'll help them understand a little bit about GDPR as well because it's important

that people know what they can and cannot do with data that they've collected.

Um, so we'll certainly do a little bit work around GDPR and probably a

little bit about safeguarding as well, so that they're aware of the kind of.

Things that they should be aware of anyway, but may not be if

they're a small organization.

And we can probably provide things like templates for spreadsheets

to record information on.

And it may be that there are other methods we have.

For instance, we, we buy into something called social impact engine, which can

work out, can calculate what your cost.

Uh, value is so for every one pound spent, it was worth 12 or whatever

it might be, and it uses hundreds and hundreds of proxies from across Europe.

So it's a huge opportunity which we can make available, and basically

it's whatever fits best with the needs they've got and can provide them with the

evidence that what they're trying to do.

Is making a difference.

And it might even be something as simple as which wellbeing survey

do you use if you are trying to improve people's, like the wellbeing.

And it could be anything from a full on Edinburgh, Warwick kind

of questionnaire to a very short version of that or to using smileys.

It really does depend on what, what their project looks like, but we will

help them to, to make that decision.

Brilliant.

That's really interesting what you were saying about all the

different methods for evaluation.

'cause I know for some organizations it can be quite difficult actually

to show or demonstrate the success of a program involving volunteers.

Yeah.

People get caught up in, in the wrong things sometimes and make the assumption

that it's all about the numbers.

And often what's really important is the case studies

and the, and the soft evidenced.

And they often don't collect that because they assume that what

people really need is how many people did we get through the door?

How long were they there?

What did they do?

And I actually, they need to do that as well.

But often the bit that's really important is, is how do we show that person's story?

How do we show the impact that it's had?

How effective has it been?

It that is sometimes just a narrative.

It's a question of maybe.

Maybe the best way to collect that evidence is to do a feedback for,

but maybe it's to have a little video and have a little chat with somebody

online that we can also help with.

We do teach things like social media support, so it might be that if that's

the best way for them to collect the data and is also a good way for them to

then promote what they're doing, we might be able to put some of that in place.

That's the advantage I think of coming to somebody who works with community

organizations all the time is we have a very RA wide range of options and we can.

Ask those questions 'cause we know what the solutions are in advance

before they tell us usually so.

Hopefully we'll have the right solution for each of the groups that comes forward.

So we're coming to the end of our conversation today.

Is there anything else you think that people should know

about Community Action Norfolk?

I think the thing I really want people to understand about

Cannes is just the sheer breadth of.

Work that we do.

People, people are very, very well.

Everybody who's worked with us has heard of us, and we do about 700 cases a year.

So we know there's quite a few of them, but we're like a ninja service.

I mean, we don't promote ourselves in the way that some other organizations would.

We are just in the background there to support groups.

So I think if you've got a question and you've got a, a. Query or anything

that's about how a community organization runs or what it needs or what it

might want to do, give us a call.

'cause we almost certainly know.

Okay.

And I've got one last question for you, which is obviously volunteering

for health is quite different in that it is allowing for these innovations.

Rather than being very prescribed, we've got to have X number of

volunteers doing X number of things.

Are there any things that you are hoping that we'll learn or understand

better throughout the program?

I'd like to see two things.

I think one.

The actual volunteers themselves.

I'd like to see them coming from groups that aren't

traditionally being volunteering.

Um, when you consider, one of the groups we want to work with is

maybe, say neurodiversity, having people with, um, neurodiversity

issues, whatever at whatever scale.

It would be great to have them as volunteers, understanding how it can then

help their own wellbeing and support them.

So that would be the first thing.

And I think the second is actually to look at.

New things.

Things that maybe as a group they've never tried before, or new approaches

to the way they've used volunteers.

'cause there's a kind of traditional model of volunteering where you

know, someone comes along at a, in a time slot and does a specific thing.

I'd like to see people using other people's skills maybe in a different way.

So for instance, if somebody's a bit of a whiz with social media.

Actually volunteering could be showing somebody else how to be

a Wi Vol at social media as well.

It could be using those skills to create something for another organization.

It could be just spreading the word more effectively.

All of those are volunteering and they're not necessarily volunteering in

the way that we would normally say, oh, you've come along to help in the office.

Uh, so I think if we can use some creative ways to, to get volunteers

active and doing things and some new.

Candidates, if you like, for volunteering itself.

Tho, those two things would be really good, and if we could

combine them, I suspect we could do something really interesting.

A big thanks to Cata and Rick for taking the time to speak to us

about the Get Involved Innovation Fund.

To find out more, see the details in the episode notes.

Please don't forget to subscribe, rate and review this podcast.

It all helps people find us and spread the word about volunteering.

This podcast was produced for the Norfolk and Waveney integrated care

system by hospital Radio Norwich.

Original music composed and performed by Philip Re, interviews

by Sarah Briggs and Jules

Orison.