Our Back to Health campaign


Our Back to Health campaign starts with a simple idea but holds an ambitious goal - to help a million people across the UK to wait well, get well, recover well, and live well, through the support of volunteers.

To achieve this, we are asking health and care organisations to create high-impact volunteering opportunities at scale that can help one million people to get more support in the hospital, community and at home.
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Through our Back to Health campaign, we have so far supported

132,909

patients and service users

57,425

Staff

31,706

Volunteers
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Why Back to Health?

The Covid-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on the power and potential of volunteers in health and care organisations. Millions provided incredible support to people shielding and to help with the national vaccination rollout.

Although we’ve made it through the worst of the pandemic, we now face another crisis. Health and care staff and services are being stretched to breaking point, with increasing demand and significant workforce shortages.

There are huge backlogs for routine NHS operations, with a waiting list estimated at 7 million people (as of December 2022).

The Back to Health campaign is here to ensure volunteers become a key part of the solution, helping the country recover faster and stronger.

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How volunteers can help

Alongside brilliant professional staff, volunteers help to make care more effective – or even reduce the need for treatment in the first place:

Waiting Well:

  • Providing reassurance and practical support for patients on the waiting list

Getting well:

  • Helping vulnerable patients to eat and drink
  • Providing companionship to patients
  • Encouraging patients to move about to improve their mobility

Recovering well:

  • Supporting patients with prescribed physiotherapy exercises to prevent falls and reduce readmission

Living well:

  • Providing further support post discharge, including signposting patients to local community services

Three ways to get involved

Health and care organisations are encouraged to partner with us to:

Stay tuned

Sign up to our monthly Back to Health Newsletter to stay up to date with the campaign’s progress and learn about new volunteering projects across the country

Share the good news


Follow us on Twitter and Linkdn to spread the word about this campaign.

The more people can be aware of what volunteers can do, the quicker we can get 1 million people in the UK to get back to health

"Through this campaign, we want to start a national conversation to raise awareness of the huge impact of volunteering on our health and care system and to encourage more organisations to look at volunteers as an integral part of their health and care pathway."

Mark

Mark Lever

Helpforce CEO