Integrated Volunteering Responses to COVID-19 - Report Launch

9th November 2020

Helpforce has produced a report 'Integrated Volunteering Responses to Covid-19’ that looks at how Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) and Sustainability Transformation Partnerships (STPs) responded to the first wave of COVID-19. The report looks at how systems worked with volunteers to overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic.

To create this report we spoke to representatives of twelve systems to find out their experience of working with volunteers. In order to get a sense of how the collective responses worked in a particular area, we spoke to people who worked with NHS organisations, Local Authorities and Voluntary Sector organisations. By understanding and contrasting their experiences we were able to get a good sense of how systems responded.

Much of our focus was on how progress that has been made to support volunteering can be kept in place to help manage a second wave of the pandemic or future civil emergencies. After we talked to different people, it became clear that many systems had successfully solved some of the problems that have surrounded volunteering in health and care systems for many years.

Some of the things that we discovered are:

Those systems that had invested time in building relationships between organisations were best placed to respond effectively
There is a now a tremendous recognition of the value of volunteering amongst the senior leadership of the health and care systems
Most systems do not have the infrastructure in place to be able to make use of volunteers efficiently
Locally developed volunteering best match local need
The voluntary sector are able to respond with the most agility as local need develops

The clear message that we received from all of the people that we interviewed is that volunteering is a massive untapped resource in our community. The pandemic has shown that there are situations where the statutory provision of services is not able to cope and volunteers are key to maintaining resilience.

As a result of this report we are encouraging system leaders to ensure that volunteering is embedded in strategic planning and that those plans recognise the value that volunteers can bring. We are also encouraging Systems to make sure they have put in place system wide steering groups to coordinate volunteering efforts.

As we face a second wave of COVID-19 we are working with ICSs and STPs across England to try and “lock-in” the progress made in the first few months of 2020. We are keen to work with anyone that is interested in developing volunteering infrastructure.

If you want to find out more about our system wide volunteering work please join our Integrated Approaches to Volunteering group.