Cambridgeshire dad backs ‘Volunteer to Career’ scheme – aiding stretched NHS workforce

A Cambridgeshire dad who switched track from telecoms management into a frontline mental health career is backing a scheme that helped change his life – and could be key to easing NHS workforce pressures.

Andrew King became passionate about working in mental health after supporting his own son, Alex, through ten years of mental health challenges.

After 35 years in a globe-trotting telecoms role, Andrew never dreamed he could become a mental health Employment Specialist but thanks to the ‘Volunteer to Career’ programme he now spends his days helping patients into work, while Alex has also found a job in the same NHS Trust.

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 Cambridgeshire and Peterborough 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 59-year-old Andrew, 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.

Andrew King, from St Ives, said: “If it wasn’t for Volunteer to Career, I wouldn’t be working in healthcare – it has enabled me to help people like my son and that is really important to me.”

With a degree in engineering and 35 years’ experience in the telecommunications industry, the last thing Andrew expected to be doing in his fifties was working in the field of mental health. But when his son Alex developed a mental health condition while going through his GCSEs, Andrew got an insight into the challenges and problems the illness can bring. He also realised what a difference it made if the right support was available.

Despite enjoying his senior management role, Andrew hankered after more meaningful work. When an opportunity for redundancy came up he grabbed it and set about finding a role in the mental health sector.

Knowing he needed hands-on experience, Andrew applied for the pilot Volunteer To Career programme at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. In January 2024 he began volunteering in Individual Placement Support, part of the mental health services team.

“My role involved triaging new patients by interviewing them about their challenges and needs. I also helped clients develop their CVs. It sounds like a big leap from telecoms to mental health, but I found my communication and people skills were really relevant,” said Andrew.

When a paid role came up in the IPS team Andrew’s experience meant he was perfectly placed to secure it. He now works four days a week as part of the clinical team, managing his own client list and supporting people with mental health issues to find and retain employment.

Andrew said: “It’s a much more socially rewarding job than working in telecoms. I meet people all the time and I’m constantly learning. A lot of patients have been out of work for a long time and have lost confidence but with the right support they can succeed.”

And Andrew’s own son is a perfect example of how support with mental health can lead to success. After attending a wellbeing hub at the Trust as a patient, he now has paid employment there as a peer support worker and wellbeing trainer.

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 Andrew to gain valuable experience before applying for paid roles.

“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.

It also 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.

Louisa Bullivant, Voluntary Services Manager at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, said:

“As Andrew King’s story illustrates, Volunteer to Career is an effective way of opening up healthcare career opportunities to people with no prior experience in the field. We are delighted to have partnered with Helpforce on the initiative.”

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. Funding to date has included a £900,000 grant from NHS England and £865,000 from the Burdett Trust for Nursing.

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.