Bath graduate backs ‘Volunteer to Career’ scheme aiding stretched NHS workforce

A BATH psychology graduate who moved from a hospital volunteering role into study for a frontline healthcare career is backing a proven scheme that helped realise her dream – and could be key to easing NHS workforce pressures.

Jenna Leas did not picture herself working in healthcare after graduating from the University of Bath with a degree in Psychology, but thanks to the ‘Volunteer to Career’ programme she is now on course for a career in Clinical Psychology.

The initiative, piloted by national charity Helpforce, is designed to harness the power of volunteering in tackling persistent recruitment issues across health services.

It gives people who are interested in healthcare careers but don’t have a background in the field a chance to gain valuable experience and build confidence before applying for paid roles or training.

To date, 48 different NHS organisations across England, including Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust, have taken part in Volunteer to Career – enabling individuals from all walks of life to secure permanent jobs including healthcare assistants, mental health support workers and assistant physiotherapists.

Alongside 23-year-old Jenna, those who’ve moved into the sector include former members of the armed forces community, refugees, and individuals who’ve been long-term unemployed.

Now leading health voices are calling for further investment to “supersize” Volunteer to Career, with Helpforce suggesting it has potential to cost-effectively fill around 23,600 frontline healthcare job vacancies and related study placements in England by the end of the current Parliament. As of now, around 107,000 NHS secondary care roles in England are vacanti.

The call has the backing of two influential health think-tanks - The Health Foundation and The King’s Fund - as well as NHS Providers.

Jenna Leas said: “If it wasn’t for Volunteer to Career I wouldn’t have discovered my passion for clinical psychology – it gave me an insight into NHS work and all the different options open to me.”

After spending a year in London on a placement in HR, Jenna realised it wasn’t the career she wanted. Using her skills to work in the NHS appealed but she had no hospital experience and no insight into the career pathways available.

In October 2023 Jenna applied for the Volunteer To Career programme at Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust and gained a place volunteering for eight months in the Emergency Department.

Jenna, who is an international student from South Africa, currently living in Swansea, said: “It was such interesting work and very fast-paced. Patients in the ED are often going through a traumatic time, so our role was to make them and their families feel comfortable, chat to them, give them refreshments and generally help them through the experience. We took the pressure off the frontline staff, freeing them to do clinical work.”

As well as building valuable communication skills and teamwork, Jenna learned a lot about working in a clinical setting and also got opportunities to shadow staff on different wards – her favourite being Children’s Therapies.

“The thing about VTC is it’s flexible and the staff are really supportive. In Psychology it is really difficult to shadow a practitioner because of the sensitive and confidential nature of the work, so the VTC team set up Teams calls where we could talk to clinical psychologists and ask anything we wanted,” she said.

Jenna, who was recruited as a volunteer through the Friends of the RUH charity, became convinced she wanted to support children’s mental health and well-being, and last September began studying for a Master’s degree in Development and Therapeutic Play at Swansea University.

She added: “Helpforce’s Volunteer to Career scheme was perfect for me as the pathway is set up to help you explore and learn. It was an opportunity to try out new roles, ask questions, speak to experts and gain skills and experience. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a career in the NHS.”

Helpforce Chief Executive, Amerjit Chohan, said:

“The success of the Volunteer to Career programme to date has been significant. Together with our partners in NHS Trusts and other organisations, we’ve helped people like Jenna to gain valuable experience before applying for paid roles or healthcare study courses.

“Through expertly designed and structured pathways, volunteers can find their niche without the immediate pressure of employment, while being upskilled and given confidence to take into job interviews.

“Since we launched the pilot initiative in 2022, hundreds of people have taken part nationally, with 55% of them successfully transitioning from volunteering roles to paid careers in healthcare or associated courses - including nursing and midwifery.

“Our analysis shows that with the right investment, there’s clear potential to supersize the opportunity, with conservative capacity for each of the 215 NHS trusts in England to support an average of 50 volunteers annually. We believe that over the next four years that could set over 23,650 people on a path to fulfilling healthcare careers that benefit not only them, but the whole of society. We urge the Government to consider Volunteer to Career expansion as part of its upcoming NHS 10-Year Health Plan, unleashing the potential of home-grown healthcare talent.”

Not only does the Volunteer to Career programme help tackle acute frontline NHS workforce issues, it also addresses the challenge of encouraging people who aren’t in jobs - either through choice or circumstance - to re-enter the workforce, with an estimated 9.3 million people aged 16-64 in the UK deemed economically inactiveii.

And it supports a key objective of the NHS Long-Term Workforce Plan: to train more NHS staff domestically, reducing reliance on international recruitment and agency staff - with an ambition that in 15 years’ time around10.5% of the NHS workforce will be recruited from overseas, compared to nearly a quarter nowiii.

Jason Lugg, Deputy Chief Nursing Officer at Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust, said:

“As Jenna Leas’s story shows, Volunteer to Career helps to open up healthcare opportunities to people who haven’t previously worked in the field. We are delighted to have partnered with Helpforce on the initiative, which 22 members of our local community have participated in so far.”

And Helpforce’s analysis suggests substantial additional benefits for existing NHS staff, patients and local communities:

• 82% of healthcare staff engaged in the programme nationally said volunteers improved their working lives, while 90% reported that working alongside volunteers improved the quality of service they could provide.

• Each volunteer supported an average of 190 people.

• 42% of volunteers were from ethnic minority backgrounds and 61% lived in areas ranking within the 50% most deprived – illustrating the programme’s effectiveness at drawing-in diverse talent from local communities.

Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of the King’s Fund, said:

At a time when the NHS is severely stretched and tackling long-standing and chronic workforce shortages, Helpforce is doing excellent, innovative work to support volunteers to explore opportunities for an NHS career. To implement Volunteer to Career on a mass scale would require strategic investment in volunteer managers across NHS Trusts, but such investment would likely be cost-effective when set against paying high fees to agencies that supply temporary staff and helping to reduce the health services’ reliance on recruiting large numbers of healthcare staff from overseas."

Dr Jennifer Dixon DBE, Chief Executive of the Health Foundation, said:

“The results from Helpforce’s far-reaching pilot are significant. Scaling-up Volunteer to Career has to be worthy of serious consideration by a government that’s eager to get people back to work, help with long-standing NHS workforce problems and boost social capital in local communities.”

Saffron Cordery, Interim Chief Executive of NHS Providers, said:

“It’s evident that a great many NHS Trusts are already reaping benefits from the Volunteer to Career programme. Addressing NHS workforce shortages requires a readiness to explore innovative solutions and bold thinking. The advantage of expanding an already proven model like this is that good practice can easily be shared to deliver results at scale.”

As well as working with NHS hospital and ambulance trusts, the Volunteer to Career pilot has involved nine hospices.

Learn more about why volunteering should be included in the NHS 10 Year Plan.

Learn more about Volunteer to Career.

Read more stories from Volunteer to Career.

For further information, please contact:

Martin McGlown, Head of Communications at Helpforce, on 07737 722643 MM@helpforce.community; or Vy Tran, Helpforce Communications and Content Manager, on 07508 772844 vt@helpforce.community

Notes to Editors:

Helpforce is the only independent UK charity focused exclusively on establishing high impact volunteering services across the health system.

Its team of experts:

• Co-create innovative solutions with health and care organisations.

• Enable organisations to maximise the potential of volunteering to improve outcomes for people and services.

• Connect the people leading volunteers to improve quality together.

Founded in 2017, the charity works with NHS trusts, hospices, local authorities, and voluntary and community organisations – directly and indirectly supporting hundreds of thousands of people.

Helpforce was recently awarded a GSK IMPACT Award, a prestigious national health award for small and medium sized charities delivered in partnership with The King’s Fund, in recognition of programmes including Volunteer to Career.