Inclusion and diversity is in the heart of everything that the volunteering team at BHRU do

31st October 2021

The Voluntary Services department at Barking, Havering & Redbridge University Trust, under the management of Victoria Miles-Gale, Head of Patient experience, has gone from strength to strength, from ensuring that volunteers are a representation of the diversity in our tri-boroughs to develop bespoke and ground breaking opportunities.

In their first year as a team they took volunteer numbers from under 200 to 400. They reviewed our on-boarding process, making it editable and accessible, introduced new roles with part of this work was to provide assurance around governance. The voluntary services team have developed many programmes and initiatives that have been designed specifically to meet the needs of their local community. Whether the Student Summer Volunteer programme developed with a very quick turnaround, during the pandemic to support those who have had their education paused and who were undertaking health or social care studies at a local college.

Another inaugural programme is the Students in Volunteering (SiV) programme, implemented to welcome new health and social care students gain work experience in a hospital setting, they have introduced primary school volunteering where young children read to elderly patients, sing or play instruments and they have significantly improved volunteering opportunities to their seldom heard communities with programmes such as Supporting Young People at Risk which promotes employment within their trust following six-month volunteering where they obtain skills and transferable skills through competencies . Some of their work can be seen here.