Volunteering for Health is an exciting national programme and Norfolk and Waveney are one of 15 partnerships involved. In this episode we meet Nicky Stainton at Voluntary Norfolk who tells us all about what is underway in Norfolk and Waveney. Then we hear from Samantha Hartles at NHS Charities Together who shares the background and ambitions for this fantastic initiative.

To find out more about Volunteering for Health in Norfolk and Waveney visit https://improvinglivesnw.org.uk/volunteering-for-health-norfolk-and-waveney/

To get in touch with the Volunteering Discovery or Volunteering for Health 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 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.

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

Volunteering for Health is an exciting national program that

is being delivered through a partnership between NHS Charities

together, NHS England and CW Plus.

Norfolk and Waveney won a 15 partnership successful in

their application for funding.

To find out more about this opportunity, producer Jewel spoke to Nikki Staton

at Voluntary Norfolk and Samantha Hart's NHS Charities together.

First, we'll hear Jewels Chats with Nikki about the Norfolk and Wave new

partnership.

Thank you so much for being here today to talk to us about volunteering for health.

Could you start by telling us who you are and what your role is

within the Volunteering for Health Partnership in Norfolk and Waveney?

Hello?

Yeah.

My name is

Nikki Stanton.

I am the joint head of sector support at Voluntary Norfolk, with a particular

focus on volunteering and volunteer.

Norfolk is one of the partners of volunteering for health.

And we are leading on quite a lot of the delivery of the activities and

have based here two of the new posts that we created through the project.

We are going to be hearing from Samantha later about what volunteering

for health is in a national context.

Could you tell us what the idea behind the partnership in Norfolk Waveney was?

We had

been meeting in a cross sector forum for a little while to

try and create a Norfolk vision for volunteering and to develop a sort

of coordinated, joined up approach to that so that that had started in, in.

2022 that initially research and then developing the ideas

and sounding them out, and then having an official launch in 2023.

And so since then, we've gradually been trying to build the relationships

between the voluntary sector.

And the health sector and, and the local authorities to support volunteering

across the whole of Norfolk initially.

And then when we saw the volunteering for Health initiative advertised, we

thought this was a fantastic opportunity to try and translate some of our

ambitions into actions by being able to secure a budget to pay for staff to

be able to actually go out and test.

Some of the ideas we've got specifically around trying to make volunteering

more inclusive, more welcoming to people who haven't traditionally

volunteered, and to make it people feel, recognize the benefits of it.

And in those three years of the project, what are

you hoping will be achieved?

Good question.

It has

about three main strands to it.

This project, one strand is looking at how we work with

voluntary sector organizations.

Charities, community groups, social enterprises, any sort of not-for-profit

groups to engage members of the public who are experiencing health inequalities

and in particular those who have learning disabilities, autism, or

are a neurodivergent or looked after children or children leaving care.

We knew from a search in Norfolk that those groups.

Are some of the key ones that, that, that suffer from health inequalities.

So we identify that they would probably get a lot of benefit from

volunteering from that sort of social contact, from the confidence it gives

you from also moving towards work.

We identified those.

So that is one group that we are gonna be working with.

And we have a volunteering innovation manager who's just been appointed, who

will work with those organizations, those voluntary organizations, to

develop small scale projects where we can try out ideas of what are the main

barriers, how do we get over them?

What are the main motivations?

How can we make volunteering attractive?

How can we support people to move on from one-offs into more regular volunteering?

And particularly if that can be within health and care settings.

So we have a volunteering innovation fund, which is there to help cover the

costs for these financial organizations, for any activities they're setting up.

So they're not for core costs, but they're for project costs really.

And part of that money award will be to enable them to help us learn

about what's working, what's not.

So there can be quite a lot of evaluation in there.

And and reviewing of the main lessons.

Strand two is about working in health settings, but primarily primary care

settings, GP surgeries, community pharmacies, maybe community dentistry

practices, um, and helping the staff in those organizations to engage with

volunteers if they haven't done before or to extend what they do because we

know that volunteering in some of the health sector is very effective and.

But doesn't exist in others.

The, so the third strand is this Get Involved Fund and which is part of

the Get Involved Norfolk website, which is about recruiting volunteers.

And we also have now just developed into a skills hub so that people

will be able to find opportunities for training and development.

So this might be for volunteers.

Or people thinking about volunteering or also for volunteer managers.

And then and beyond that sort of at a sort of a longer term level, we are

hoping to make the arguments to the authorities that have the funding to

say volunteering is really beneficial.

It's really effective.

It can help solve a lot of problems and, but it's doesn't come for free.

Thinking about those different strands of the program, I'm curious how

they relate to what you found through the vision for volunteering and what

was discovered through that research.

I think the main lessons we learned from that, and they're similar

to the national research findings as well, is that a lot of the long-term,

regular, older volunteers that have been underpinning many organizations

for decades sometimes had to step back during COVID because they were older.

They may have been vulnerable.

Because their organization stopped doing what it was doing or had to pivot to a

more technology based way of delivering services, which didn't really suit them.

So we lost a large S swat of some of the key volunteers.

In, in, in organizations, particularly smaller organizations, rural ones, and

that it was proving difficult to recruit new volunteers because people are very,

there were so many demands on their time.

Those that were coming up.

There was the active elderly still very often were extending their time at work.

The retirement age has as extended so that they were still working or

sometimes they were choosing to work.

Sometimes they were going back into work.

Very often they were doing care care duties for their family, different

generations of their family.

When the community, perhaps neighbors and then people are working, we

all know everybody's trying to do more with less time these days.

So the sort of the regular volunteering opportunities.

Were not being taken up.

We need to think about the sorts of opportunities that people can access,

that perhaps more responsive, that perhaps can be done remotely if they still are

not happy about leaving home or they're, they want to fit around work commitments.

So things like telephone befriending or, or also online coaching or even

being a trustee, but from a distance where you can join online for meetings.

So we are looking at those different sorts of opportunities.

We're also looking at how volunteering can be made attractive to younger people

so that we are looking at developing the next generations of volunteers.

And then just around issues around accessibility, the physical accessibility

into workplaces, but also the sort of.

The additional support that sometimes is needed.

And so it's about looking at quite specific barriers that different groups

face and we can't solve them all.

Transport is quite a big issue in Norfolk and, and that limits where people can go

to volunteer, but there are ones that we can reduce or even hopefully eliminate.

In the partnership, you've mentioned that voluntary Norfolk are

leading a lot of the delivery element.

Who are the other partners and could you tell us about the

role that they'll be playing?

We've got, there are seven partners

altogether, so the ICB is the lead partner.

The ICB is handling the, the actual grant that comes in, and so on doing that

financial reporting, part of the support to the voluntary organizations that

we're gonna work with is that Community Action Norfolk and Community Action

Suffolk are going to help administer the grants, but also give support to those

smaller organizations that might need it.

So whilst we are in contact with them and we're saying, oh, you're

doing some great bit of work here.

But maybe you need some support with looking at your business planning

or your, your trustee recruitment or support or marketing and social media.

Is there other things that we can do to help you become a more robust

organization plan for the future, to identify perhaps other funding

streams to make them a more robust?

So that's gonna be a great addition, I think, to, to those people that we're

gonna engage with as organizations.

Norfolk County Council is, is a partner because they have

public health under their wing.

So that's something that we need to be aware of and we have close connections

with the, the community team at, at the county council, and they're very

supportive of, of this sort of work and of us making sure that volunteering

is, can grow and can develop.

And we have Sally Dyson for the Northern Orange University Hospital

who as fantastic experience.

Of volunteering within the health service.

And she is a font of wisdom about and knowledge about how to support

volunteers and what the benefits are and, and where we can direct them to.

And then the final partner is the Institute for Volunteering

Research, who are based at the University of East Anglia.

And they are working alongside us to help us evaluate what it is that we are doing.

So we are asking the organizations, we're giving the small funds to.

How are they working for you?

We need to be looking at ourselves and saying, how is this working overall?

Is it achievement we're trying to achieve?

How do we know that it is and how can we demonstrate in the longer term

that volunteering is worth supporting?

It sounds like there's still a lot of work to do.

The program started last year.

What's been happening since then?

It's like an iceberg really.

There's not an

awful lot at the top of that's poking out the water, but there has

been a great deal of work to build a foundation for it because this is a

national scheme and we are one of 15 collaborations that have been given funds.

There has been quite a lot of development time going in to make sure that there

was structures and paperwork and advice.

And opportunities that were going to be available for all of us.

There's been a focus on trying to establish cross area relationships

so that we can learn from each other, share as we go along the learning.

There's also been putting in place those, making more robust, those partnership

relationships, recognizing how do we.

How are we actually to deliver this?

What is the shape of the jobs that we need to have out there?

How are we, how are we going to find the right people to do those jobs?

What?

Once we decided that, so we have been having quite a lot of meetings,

setting up a lot of the structures and the systems that will be essential

for the next couple of years.

And then goes

through

recruitment

process.

So the innovation fund has launched.

What else is coming next?

We'll be talking to the primary care networks and, and those within

the NH system that are using volunteers already or have said that they would like

to develop volunteering opportunities in their practice or in their settings.

So that's going to be an important part of the next sort of.

Three to six months is identifying who those potential partners out

within the system, the health system care system, are going to be, and

building the relationships with them.

We're also going to be giving out the first lot of the innovation

fund awards end of June probably for, to get that underway.

So then we'll start to see.

Well, actually, it's like when people are delivering and how do we

monitor that, measure that, how do we keep involved in that so we can

see what's learning and what's not.

Then with the get involved skills platform, we are really looking to develop

that more, to be more comprehensive.

So we already have a resources page on there.

Lots of really useful resources about policies and procedures, about good

practice, connections, references to guidelines, all sorts of things on there.

Which I would urge people to go and check out because it's already

brilliant, but obviously there's a lot of information out there and

we need to find what is the useful information to bring in and put up there.

It's probably on a website somewhere else, but it's useful having

everything together so people can just see, ah, that's up there too.

I'll check that one out and and find that there's really useful

guidance, something they haven't even thought about particularly.

Thank you so much for your time today, Nikki.

I've got one last question for you, which is, in such a big project with

so many different things happening, is there one particular thing that stands

out to you as exciting or interesting?

I think what's U unique about

this project is that it is fluid, that it is about learning.

It isn't a target driven project, which so often it is.

We've said, we're gonna do this, we've gotta get 28 of those, we've

gotta get a hundred of these, and we've got to do it by that date.

And you're just driven to try and do it as best you can, but at the end

you're being forced to do stuff because.

You've said you would deliver this a quantity.

This is much more about quality.

This is much more about donuts, number, worry about the numbers.

Let's.

Try and drill down and see the nitty gritty of if there's a group of adults

with learning disabilities who live in rural North Norfolk, who would love to

volunteer but don't know how to do it, what are the actual steps we need to take

to enable them to feel confident about it?

For them to understand what the options are, the opportunities to look at their

transport requirements, look at the training that organization that might

host them will need before they come so that they can welcome them properly

and give them the right support.

That we can measure the benefit to those individuals.

Did they get out of it?

They hoped they would.

Did they feel supported?

Would they like to do it again?

Where might they like to do it?

So that there's lots of questions there that we can learn a great deal from.

And normally we don't have the time to ask all those questions or to focus on a small

group like that and to really learn from it and then say, okay, we think we sorted

some of the challenges up in North Orford.

Let's try it with a difficult group somewhere else, or, let's try it.

Over in West Norfolk where there's a group that would like to do

something a bit similar and let's see what else we can learn from there.

And then to the wider voluntary sector.

If you would like adults learning to facilities come and help you

in your organization, they'd love to come and do it, but you need

to have this and this in place.

So I think that's gonna be really exciting.

We hope you'll agree with Nikki that it sounds like an exciting

initiative to be involved in.

To hear how the Norfolk Waverley partnership fits within the wider

context, we now turn to our second guest.

So I'm Samantha Hartle.

I am the National Lead for Volunteering for Health, working

at NHS Charities together.

And I guess a summary of my role would be the kind of responsibility

around strategic systems change for volunteering infrastructure with a

focus on how we do it through learning.

So quite a nice, exciting job I would say.

Is there a way that you can summarize such a big project and tell us what

is volunteering for house before?

I'll give it a try.

So it's, it's a national program and the specific focus is on

volunteering infrastructure.

So we're investing 10 million pounds over three years.

And the core focus, well, there's a few core areas, is developing volunteering

infrastructure and building capacity and capability in organizations

in health and care, accelerating change and breaking down barriers to

volunteering, building connections, and a network between systems.

Testing new models and hopefully scaling them up, spreading best practice and

just developing that infrastructure in as many places as possible.

But I think the most important thing is, is the focus on learning.

So although we've got 15 funded partnerships, it's how we then scale up

that learning to all the other systems across England so that they can develop

their volunteering infrastructure.

Such an

exciting opportunity and something that doesn't come along very often.

Would you be able to tell us about the background to the

program, how it came to being?

I don't think we go a day without mentioning the COVID to

Nineteens pandemic, but during the pandemic, obviously we had hundreds and

thousands of volunteers that stepped forwards to give their time and to

support the NHS and their communities.

And the pandemic really highlighted the important role that volunteers can play.

But it also raised a lot of questions about the effectiveness of our current.

Volunteering approaches and what could we do to harness some of that

learning and the power of volunteers?

So after COVID Pandemic, the NHS Volunteering Task Force was set

up in 2022, and that was bringing together volunteers, clinicians, civil

servants, the voluntary sector, to understand how to harness and build

upon that outpouring of help that.

We saw happen in, in the pandemic, the result was a set of recommendations to

take volunteering to the next level.

And that's kind of how this program has been born outta

that set of recommendations.

So it's, it's being delivered in partnership between NHS England

CW Plus, who are the official charity for Chelsea and Westminster

Hospital and NHS charities together.

And I guess it's just important to say that even though.

So much amazing work came out of the pandemic and, and it hasn't continued

everywhere and purely not at that scale.

This program isn't about increasing volunteer numbers or demonstrating the

value of volunteering because I think we are all very aware of how wonderful

volunteering is that kind of value is.

Understood and known by many.

It's actually asking more questions about how do we make this work

in every system, in every place, and what are the conditions that

are needed to make that work?

So with all that in mind, you mentioned that Norfolk and Waveney

were one of 15 partnerships.

Yeah.

What was it about the application for our area that stood out?

So we really wanted a diverse portfolio of partnerships.

So we wanted some areas that had little to no volunteering infrastructure

whatsoever who maybe have not had much investment over previous years.

Through to other systems that are more mature, that have great models

already, but the investment would kind of take them to the next level.

We wanted a mixture of NHS led.

We wanted voluntary sector led, and also to think about the different issues that.

Partnerships we're looking at specifically.

So something for me that stood out for Norfolk and Waveney was the wanting

to target local issues and that real passion for co-design and cross

sectoral collaboration, but also the fact that Norfolk and Waveney has got.

Brilliant foundations in place with a proven track record with

your volunteer, Norfolk Volunteer Path and the volunteer Academy.

So it's, I think we see this partnership and the potential is really exciting.

'cause there's already so much great work in place with really

good, strong relationships.

It's, it's being able to see how that goes to the next level.

Does the work that we'll be looking at in Norfolk and

Waveney have any similarities to the partnerships in other areas?

Yes, so we are starting to see some themes coming out.

Some, there are some differences too.

One thing I'd say is that the Norfolk and Waveney partnership,

having an ICB or integrated care board lead is quite different.

We only have two other partnerships, and that's Humber, north Yorkshire,

and Cornwall, and the isles of Sly.

That have a similar kind of governance and setup.

So I'm really interested in that and particularly to see does that impact

governance and sustainability and decision making when we have these

partnerships embedded in the voluntary sector versus in NHS structures.

I think also the fact that there's the neighborhood fund that Norfolk Waveland

looking at is something, again, there's only four partnerships in total that are

looking at having a neighborhood fund.

And that's something again, I think that excites a lot of people and

really appealed to the panel because it, for us, it's brilliant that you've

got the existing infrastructure in place and the strong relationships,

but it's also acknowledging that kind of need for grassroots engagement,

broadening diversity of volunteers and that kind of true co-design.

So yeah, that's something that kind of.

It stands out as a theme for four of you, but is still quite different and

I think we'll all be kind of watching for that 'cause it's very exciting.

But I guess the main themes that are coming out at the moment is people

wanting to look at volunteering passports.

Recruitment and retention, digital platforms and influencing systems and

decision makers, which given the current climate with all that's happening in the

health system, I think is quite expected.

But yes, so there's quite a lot of different themes going on.

Something that's particularly exciting about.

The Norfolk and Waverley partnership is the primary care element.

So out of those three kind of core focus areas, looking at primary care,

volunteering infrastructure, and I think it aligns really nicely with

those three NHS shifts that we're hearing about transforming care.

So the focus from.

Hospital to community and also thinking about moving to

more of a preventative model.

Thinking about that neighborhood health and neighborhood model, we actually only

have one other partnership that's thinking about doing some work with primary care,

and that's the Summerset partnership who are working with primary care networks.

But I'm, I've got a lot of passion for that side of things and thinking

about, it's an area that maybe we've not really thought about before.

And volunteering infrastructure and the role of the voluntary sector with

primary care could be really powerful.

Particularly when we think about health inequalities and core 20 plus

five and growing volunteer diversity.

So yes, lots of lots of things to shout about, I think with this partnership.

That's all the questions that I have for you.

Is there anything else you'd like to add about the program?

I think it's, it would be helpful to say and acknowledge that there's

a lot going on in the volunteering space at the moment, and that's

locally, regionally, and nationally.

There are lots of big players in the arena that are making calls to action

and statements about what we need to be doing with volunteering, particularly

in the healthcare space and all.

I think we're a fairly quiet voice at the moment, and I think that infrastructure.

Isn't always the juiciest topic, but I think it's really important to acknowledge

that if we can get infrastructure right, particularly within this program

and can kind of spread and scale that across England, I think that's the

enabler for us to be able to achieve so much more improved outcomes, improved

experiences for patients and communities.

So yeah, that it feels like it's one layer of many different kind of transformation

projects that are happening at the moment in the volunteering space, but it's just.

Such a great opportunity to have everybody involved in it.

We hope you enjoy today's episode.

Our thanks go to Nikki and Samantha for taking the time to speak to

us about volunteering for health.

As the work continues, we'll share stories of the learning and

progress that the team are making.

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 Wave and the integrated care

system by Hospital Radio Norwich.

Hosted by Sarah Briggs, producer was Jules Odeon.

Original music, composed and performed by Philip Aldridge, interviews

by Sarah Briggs and Jules Odeon.