Helpforce's response to former health secretary Alan Milburn's article for The Times

As the former health secretary Alan Milburn set out in a column for The Times earlier this week, tackling the huge problems facing our NHS – including massive waiting lists – needs radical thinking and multiple solutions. But there’s one already available that we not using to anywhere near its full potential – volunteers. Volunteers enable staff to focus on priority clinical tasks, accelerate the patient discharge process, and help people to settle back into the community – reducing the likelihood of readmission.

From our Volunteering Innovators Programme with various NHS Trusts, and significant research with patients, staff and volunteers, we have clear evidence of the complementary role that volunteers play. Nurses estimate that volunteers free up an average of 26 minutes per nurse per day, enabling them to support more patients. When volunteers support patient mobility, patients are less likely to be re referred to physiotherapy. And volunteers can speed up patient discharge by 44 minutes.

We have already seen throughout the pandemic that there is significant public interest in volunteering. But despite this, and its proven positive outcomes, volunteering is still not maximised across enough healthcare settings. There is a huge untapped pool of people who stand ready to reduce the strain on hard-working staff and ensure that patient care is as effective as possible. The fact that they aren’t being integrated into many more aspects of healthcare is a major missed opportunity.

With NHS staff and resources under immense pressure just to deliver the core medical treatment people desperately need, volunteers can provide vital additional support to make that treatment more effective or even reduce the need for it in the first place.

We need many more health and social care leaders to prioritise the use of volunteers – not only as part of the immediate recovery from the pandemic, but as part of the long term and sustainable future of the NHS.