In this episode, host Sarah introduces the Norfolk Community Health and Care Neuro Exercise Team to explore their support for individuals with neurological conditions. The team includes various specialists and volunteers such as Stephen, whose involvement creates a supportive environment for patients. The discussions highlight the benefits of community and volunteer support in motivating patients to stay active and socially engaged.

To find out more about volunteering with the Norfolk Community Health and Care team visit https://www.norfolkcommunityhealthandcare.nhs.uk/volunteering/

Visit the Volunteering Discovery page here https://improvinglivesnw.org.uk/get-involved/volunteering/volunteering-discovery-podcast/ or get in touch using jules.alderson@nhs.net

Volunteering Discovery is a Hospital Radio Norwich production for Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System.

Sarah (host): Hello and welcome to Volunteering Discovery.

This is a podcast which takes you behind the scenes of volunteering in health

and social care in Norfolk and Waveney.

Volunteers enhance the experience of people accessing health and social

care in a huge variety of ways.

In our hospitals, our communities and even from the comfort of their own homes.

In each podcast we'll be hearing from those who give their

time supporting others and the people who work alongside them.

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

One in six people in the UK suffer from a neurological condition.

These include anything from sudden onset conditions such as a

traumatic brain injury or stroke to progressive degenerative conditions

such as Parkinson's and MS.

In today's episode, we will be meeting with the Community Neuro

Exercise Team from the Norfolk Community Health and Care Trust.

We'll be finding out how they provide support for people living with a

neurological condition and the role that volunteers play in their exercise group.

We started by asking Chloe, a staff member, to introduce us to

the exercise group that she runs and the people that they support.

My name is Chloe Dunn and I am the Neurology Exercise Specialist for the West

Place Community Neurology Team for Norfolk Community Health and Care and we work

in the community with any patient with a neurological condition apart from stroke.

Predominantly, our main caseload is patients with multiple sclerosis,

Parkinson's disease, brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, and then lots

of less common conditions such as Huntingdon's, cerebellar ataxia, motor

neurone disease, just to name a few.

So we're a multidisciplinary team.

We have around 16 people within our team.

We have physiotherapists, occupational therapists.

My name as the Neurology Exercise Specialist, Community Assistant

Practitioners, Speech and Language Therapists, also our Specialist Nurses.

We did used to have Clinical Psychology.

That post is still being advertised at the moment.

But we all work holistically as a multidisciplinary team to support

patients in the community who have got a neurological condition basically

from all angles, from all perspectives.

We were very lucky just In 2019, we got the funding to enhance the space that

we've got, so we now have, um, treadmill, rowing machine, two different types of

bike, um, which we've got because it enables people to get on them better.

We have parallel bars, we have, um, a great big rig, for those of you who

don't know what that is, it's this cube shaped box that's got things

all the way around the outside of it.

Very flexible piece of equipment because it's got lots of different

things that we can add to it.

When they come along to the group, we sit together collectively, do a group

warm up, and then everybody gets set up on a cardiovascular machine, which

would be either the treadmill, the rowing machine, or the bike normally.

Then I tend to set up a circuit each week, so it's different exercises.

Some using equipment, some don't use equipment.

Working on the things that patients with neurological conditions

will tend to have issues with.

So it will be balance.

core strength, their gait.

So a lot of people might experience a foot drop.

So we'd be trying to work on the way that we walk and the way that

we place our feet and strength exercises, upper limb, lower limb.

Sitting on gym balls is also a good one because we're really working on

their core strength and their balance.

Everything in between.

Sarah (host): Chloe spoke to us about how the focus of the team changed and

the idea of the group started to evolve.

The team realised that volunteers could play an important role in offering

the best possible experience for patients participating in the group.

Exercise is a really important and large part of our job and

our caseload because it's really important that we are keeping our

patients as active as possible.

It was really become apparent a couple of years after I'd started

in the role that we were going and seeing people at home on an individual

basis and it was very repetitive.

We were doing a lot of stuff that on an individual basis that

people would like actually to do.

more as a group, because a lot of our patients were also

quite isolated and lonely.

The social part of the group, along with the exercise, was actually coming

across as being just as important.

We had a chat with Donna.

She came up with the suggestion of having volunteers within the setting

to come and support those groups.

So it enabled me to have more people, more patients, that wanted to come along

and exercise, and it was just An extra pair of eyes, an extra pair of hands,

and just somebody that the patients could talk to, as well as talk to me.

Because for a lot of them, it was so much more than just the exercise.

Sarah (host): We met with Donna to talk about her role and the process of how

volunteers become a part of the Community Neuro Exercise Group and the wider team.

My name's Donna Barr and I'm a Volunteer Service Coordinator

with the NCH& C, that's the Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust.

And I'm based in the West.

It involves the recruitment of volunteers to go into different teams with the NHS.

And it involves the managing of those.

So we train them, go through their induction processes and things

that I can come on to later.

And we basically match them up with an appropriate role where we

feel that they would give benefit to the team and they would benefit

from volunteering themselves.

I've been in touch with Chloe Dunn that runs the exercise groups for about five

or six years now, and she's had a variety of different volunteers come and go.

So what I do is, Chloe will come to me when someone is going to

move on, and then I start to look to recruit to that role again.

Or if someone comes to me in the interim and I think it would be a good fit, then I

would go to Chloe and say, there's someone waiting in the wings, and, um, they could

be an ideal, uh, person to volunteer.

within that group.

Sarah (host): Involving volunteers in an exercise group, it might sound

like the volunteers are going to be working up a sweat in the gym.

Chloe explained to us what the volunteers do in the group to

help the patients and the staff.

Predominantly, they're there to meet the patients, say hello, and to

help set up the gym, to lay out exercise cards, make sure that patients are getting

themselves onto equipment that They might need help putting their feet into a foot

pedal or they need a certain dumbbell grabbing that's of the right weight.

As they get more familiar with what they're doing, the patients are

really comfortable around them.

They'll ask them to go and grab them something and they just get Get on with

it and they know what they're doing.

We've got a number of different patients with lots of different needs,

different mobility needs, some in wheelchairs, some who come in with sticks.

It's having them there knowing that, Oh, that person's struggling a little bit.

I'll go and help them.

So they don't do anything clinical.

It's all about just being that extra pair of hands.

So you might have somebody who just is struggling to get up from the

floor or to get up from the plinth.

So they're just, there's a pair of hands, that extra bit of support.

Sarah (host): We spoke to him about how he became a volunteer and what he does in

a typical session assisting the patients.

My name is Stephen, exercise group volunteer.

So I'm attached to the community neurology team, which they do

the exercise with neuro patients.

I just generally give a supporting hand.

When I got into my early sixties, I always had the intention of retiring.

I worked in the public sector, semi public sector, all of my life.

And I had this idea of, I think, working in the public sector gives you a sense

of, uh, a nuance, a buy in, so working with the public at large, which have all,

you know, worked in the private sector.

Coming up to retirement, I thought, I've got the, at the time, what I

want to do is, I thought, I got a whiteboard, put some ideas down what

I wanted to do, and one of them was volunteering, but I didn't know on

what level, entry level, where to go.

For example, I used to work with the M.

O.

D.

in the army, used to just, used to audit the armed forces, for example.

I used to work with the charity within the armed forces, SAFA, so I had any clue

of maybe working down at Marum with SAFA.

Then I saw something on the internet.

I went in initially with a blank piece of paper.

Having worked all my life, I've worked in the financial area, risk management,

corporate governance, auditing.

I've done that for 30 plus years.

So I didn't want to sit behind a laptop.

I didn't want to do word processing or Excel spreadsheet.

I didn't do anything to that.

I wanted something completely different.

And speaking to Donna, I knew what opportunity had arisen, which was this.

They were just starting the thing up from basics, drains up.

She explained it to me and I thought, yeah, I could do that.

Plus I've been in a running club.

So it appealed to me, the exercising things and having done

circuits and things like that.

I thought, I'd like to have a go at that.

So it's like your first day walking into a school classroom.

You're encountering, it's a new environment, new people.

I don't know how the NHS works as an entity.

So going in there, I must admit the first week or two getting used to the people,

the machines, how the machines work, because they're all uniquely different.

The workstations that Chloe creates, she tries to freshen it up every week.

So yes, different workstations for the different patients.

So after two or three weeks of doing that, I finally, the penny dropped for me.

Yeah, I could do this.

And now we've got the stage now.

Nine months later, I'm quite proficient on setting up the machines.

And there's a core of patients here.

There's one or two on the periphery coming in and coming out.

But it tends to be a core.

It's getting to know the people as well.

And certain people have certain assistance levels that the other person may not.

You can actually bespoke your time and put your time into helping that

person because they have a particular type of assistance that they need.

Sarah (host): We asked Chloe what it's like working alongside

volunteers and asked Stephen how he sees his part in the group.

I feel like they come and they want to learn, so

they will always ask questions.

They've filled in their confidentiality agreement, so it's nice that we can talk

to them about the issues that particular patient might be experiencing, what their

condition is, and it's nice that they feel like they're learning about different

conditions because we do come across them.

If somebody's floundering, I'm not an expert.

I, I just mug them as best I can.

But if I see someone is floundering on a particular exercise, or they're

asking me a technical question, which I'm not qualified to answer,

I'll call Chloe across to answer.

It's really important.

They know their boundaries.

They know what they're capable of doing and also what they're happy to do.

If they're not happy they'll give us a shout over and we'll come over and

carry on and also they're very good at coming and saying I'm happy to

do it but can you just tell me that this is okay then we're able to just

work together to to get that done.

I just like to think I add a little bit of value, which is something,

as an auditor we used to look at read value, VFMs and so on, but in a simple

way, if I'm doing this, the experts can do, they're the paid people, the permanent

staff, they can actually put their effort into that, I can do the chores, but I

don't mind doing the chores, because that is the added value I bring to it, because

it releases them to do something else.

On the patient side, I just think I'm not a paid official.

I'm just one of the lads off the street, really.

So, it just seems to work for me, seems to work for them.

It enables us to give the best to our patients whilst feeling supported.

By somebody who's there just because they want to be there and

they want to help and I do think that makes a massive difference.

I, I don't think I would be able to offer the groups the service that I

offer if I didn't have a volunteer.

Sarah (host): As Stephen told us that he'd chosen this volunteering role

as it was so different to his work, we asked if he'd found any of his

previous experience helpful in his role.

Being an auditor, you've got to be able to.

Communicate on a different level.

For example, I've audited on submarines, I've audited at the

army, I've audited in warehouses.

So you need to be able to go on at any different level.

You can talk to a commanding officer one day, or you could be

somebody in a warehouse or whatever.

So it's being able to go into different levels, some of those different tensions

and different scenarios working.

So you've got to deal with them as they come along and manage them.

I think.

I've been doing it for three decades.

I've been able to, I think, adjust my game depending on the changing circumstances.

I've worked in a lot of places, I've seen a lot, and I think I've

been very lucky to have so many opportunities in my workplace.

Some of that must have passed over to me to some extent that I can,

just basically just helps me manage this particular new role for me.

So yeah, I just say I'm going to work tomorrow with the guys and the nine

months has been a great pleasure for me.

Sarah (host): We asked Chloe and Stephen to tell us more about how

having a volunteer as part of the group makes a difference for the patients.

It just gives them a bit of variability in who they can communicate

with and have a conversation with.

Like you said, a lot, for a lot of our patients, the group's

not just about the exercise.

It's about getting them out, motivating them to come out and to socially

interact with people whilst exercising.

And for a lot of them If they didn't come, I would give them exercises to do at home.

I would say 80 percent of the people I give exercises to at home don't do

them because the motivation within ourselves to do something when it's

reliant on ourselves is just not there.

Whereas if they've got a commitment to attend something, they come.

And they exercise, and they interact socially, and they get to have a chat.

I feel like they all go away happier as a result, and healthier,

because they're exercising as well.

I think you'll probably find it easy with blokes, because, you know,

the common denominator is, you know, what's your favourite pint of ale this

week, or football, or if somebody's into a running club, I can have a chat.

You know, we used to run, 15 years ago, my club, we were running against

his club, but we didn't know it.

The ladies, again, just getting to know them.

And you just break down the barriers and little trivia and it just makes

the world go around and it makes our session a bit more pleasable because

some of the people that come in here that they do have quite extreme needs.

So it's not easy for them to come in here.

Some of them have serious difficulties.

And what I like about the staff is being there, an

administrator, auditor type chap.

There's obviously they're trying to do.

exercises focused on the neurologist side, but it's also I think the care

and compassion when they say one of the ladies might break down or something

because maybe just knew that symptoms have just been diagnosed and the

ability to care and emphasize with these people, which I think I might have

difficulty doing, but I don't know if the guys are trained in that discipline

or it just comes naturally to them.

That's a size.

Of the work I didn't expect, but they do, they're very supportive of these people.

The machines have to be wiped down regularly, so if somebody will have a

session on then I'll, I'll wipe down the machines with it and so and so.

I'm keeping the machines going, and again as people are on their

treadmills for 10 or 15 minutes, just having a little chat with them.

Typical man talk, Manchester United are rubbish, Newcastle top of the

world, apart from this weekend.

That sort of thing, and afterwards.

The warm down, Chloe will do the warm down with them again.

Just tidying things up, switching off the machines.

And then that's an average day at the office for me now.

I'm not a great communicator.

I need to go to networking sessions and sit with the auditors and accountants.

I find that very difficult.

He just bought the pants off me, but here I think I've discovered a side.

It can actually.

I have a certain amount of empathy with people because seeing them week in

and week out it develops an interest.

So to do small talk and things like that, by sitting around a seminar

doing, talking about spreadsheets, it just bought the pants off me.

But I've been able to do, surprisingly, I can actually do small talk now, which

I couldn't do two or three years ago.

I think that really makes a difference because I think some of them

feel like they can't talk to me about day to day because I'm the professional.

That's not what I'm here for.

Sarah (host): One of the patients who has been attending the Community

Neuroexercise Group is John.

He told us what he thought of the volunteers involvement in the group.

My name's John Lawrence.

I live down at Market.

I've suffered from Parkinson's disease since 2006 when it was first

diagnosed, but probably started sometime before that, but we're not sure.

However, I have Parkinson's and get on with it.

I've done many jobs, and ended up owning my own business, which was

a Leyland truck dealership, and I packed that up to make furniture.

I am here to do exercises under the tuition of Chloe, Daniel, and Stephen.

I come every week I can.

I've asked if I can come again, because naturally you need to

be invited onto these courses.

I feel that they're doing me a lot of good.

Hopefully I'll get on the next course, because today's the last day for me.

So we'll wait and see what happens.

The volunteers that I've met here, at this particular event, have been very good.

Very helpful.

They encourage us to keep going.

Do what we can.

In fact, encourage us to push a little bit harder when you're stiffening

up and you have trouble moving.

That's exactly what you need.

So I look forward to coming to this session on a Monday.

They give us encouragement.

I know they perform a role in making sure that we're doing the exercises correctly

and we don't injure ourselves, which we're prone to do without supervision.

It's mainly encouragement.

They're all a very friendly bunch and makes it very pleasurable to come in.

Sarah (host): As with most volunteering roles within health and care, there is

a process for a new volunteer to join and support the community neuro team.

We asked Donna to talk us through the journey for getting involved.

First of all, we'd have an informal phone chat, and then I

would send them a link for the Better Impact, uh, system that we have,

which is an application form that goes through the Voluntary Norfolk website.

And then when that comes to me, we would then meet.

We could talk about, uh, The role itself, any concerns they have, and from

there we start the proper recruitment process, which would include taking a

couple of references, starting a DBS, if needed, and a certain requirement,

and we put them onto an induction session, a volunteer induction session.

They're predominantly face to face.

They're about 5 hours.

They're a fantastic opportunity for the volunteer to meet other

volunteers, to ask loads of questions.

We go through all sorts of health and safety, manual handling.

We go through infection control, communication, all

sorts of things on that day.

Once they've ticked all those boxes, that's when we make sure

they've got the uniform, lanyard ID, then they're ready to go.

So once they've started the role, Our door is always open, but what we tend

to do is review it within four weeks and talk to the team and their volunteer

champion, because each volunteer doesn't only just have a coordinator like myself

in each of the places they are, they would have a champion on a sessional basis,

someone they could talk to if they've heard something they're unsure about.

It could be something as simple as which cup to use to make a cup of tea

or if maybe they've heard a safeguarding issue and they want to pass that on.

So they have that support and then we review them every six months, but we

also send out newsletters bi monthly.

They do get to meet us at social events.

We have social events in each of the places and then sometimes

we incorporate them together so people can meet other volunteers.

Sarah (host): To end our conversation, we asked Stephen and John to share their

final thoughts about volunteering with the Community Neuro team in West Norfolk.

I would think it's a two way exchange.

We're giving time and assistance to a charity, it's NHS in this

instance, but the other side of the coin, it works both ways.

I think if you've got like a model compass, a strong social core or ethos

where you want to genuinely help other people, in terms of humans or even on

animal welfare or something like that.

If you've got that urge and you've got the time, my kids all grew up,

they went to university and so on.

I've done my bit, they're happy, so I just want to give a bit of my

time in a positive and creative and supportive way, really, and don't get

paid for it, but I feel better for it.

And if that's a message that comes out of this for the other people out

there, maybe taking early retirement and you have that spare time, just

give it a whirl, give it a bash.

The only thing I can say, I'm 84, so this is the first

time I've had to have support.

I've been a very independent person, but without them, of

course, it wouldn't happen.

That would be a great loss.

Anybody thinking of volunteering, they would be very much appreciated.

Sarah (host): We hope you enjoyed listening to today's episode.

A big thank you to Chloe, Donna, Stephen and John for speaking with us.

If you would like to find out more about Norfolk Community Health and Care

Trust and how to volunteer with them, please visit their website on www.

norfolkcommunityhealthandcare.

nhs.

uk 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 Waverley Integrated Care

System by Hospital Radio Norwich.

Hosted by Sarah Briggs.

Producer was Jules Alderson.

Original music composed and performed by Philip Aldred.

Interviews by Sarah Briggs and Jules Alderson.