Senior Nigerian nurse backs ‘Volunteer to Career’ scheme aiding stretched NHS workforce

A FORMER Nigerian nursing director who left her homeland over fears for her family’s safety is forging a career in the NHS thanks to an innovative scheme that could help tackle health workforce pressures in the UK.

Eunice Somade loved her job at Lagos University Teaching Hospital but she and her family were in daily fear of frequent violence, kidnappings, and threats in the city. She came to the UK in 2022 knowing it would not be easy to gain work in the NHS - but thanks to a unique ‘Volunteer to Career’ programme, she now applies her 27 years’ experience to caring for the elderly as a hospital staff nurse.

The initiative, run 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, or who have previously worked in a different system, 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 Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, where Eunice works - 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 51-year-old Eunice those who have 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.

Eunice Somade, from Allerton, near Bradford, said: “If it wasn’t for Helpforce’s Volunteer to Career programme it would have been so much more difficult to bring all my skills and experience to the NHS.”

Eunice was working as an Assistant Director of Nursing at Lagos University Teaching Hospital when she and husband Taofeek decided to make a new life for themselves in the UK along with their children.

“It just wasn’t a safe place to bring up a family. In Nigeria there was always violence, kidnappings, and threats to life. We wanted to be somewhere where we could walk down the street without feeling scared of who was in front of us or behind us,” said Eunice.

But when Eunice resigned from her high-level role, she knew that despite her impressive experience working across many different aspects of healthcare in Nigeria, she needed to be equipped to work in the NHS.

After applying for the Volunteer to Career programme run by Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust in 2023, Eunice was taken on as a volunteer in the baby clinic at the city’s Westbourne Green Community  Hospital.

It gave Eunice the chance to put into practice many of the skills she had acquired in Nigeria while also finding out about systems, policies, and standards in the NHS.

Alongside her voluntary role, Eunice was able to study for OSCE exams that gave her the license needed to work as a nurse in the UK.

When a job came up at Westwood Park Hospital in Bradford, Eunice successfully applied. She now works as a Staff Nurse caring for the elderly and is delighted to be getting her career back on track.

“Helpforce’s Volunteer to Career initiative was a great way to get a foot in the door and experience healthcare in this country. At my interview they seemed impressed with my nursing experience and with the fact that I had immersed myself in the NHS through my volunteering,” said Eunice.

Eunice says she would recommend Volunteer to Career to anyone interested in an NHS career. She has even suggested it to her own 16-year-old daughter as a possible future pathway.

Helpforce Chief Executive, Amerjit Chohan, said:

“The success of the Volunteer to Career programme to date has been significant. Together with our partners, we’ve helped people like Eunice to gain valuable NHS 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 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 inactive.

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 now.

Catherine Jowitt, Head of Charity and Volunteering at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, said:

“As Eunice’s story illustrates, Volunteer to Career is an effective way of opening up healthcare career opportunities to people with different backgrounds and life experiences. 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 national programme 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.”

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.