Shrewsbury mum’s traumatic pregnancy led to NHS volunteering – now she’s on her way to becoming a midwife

A Shrewsbury woman who experienced a traumatic pregnancy and birth was so inspired by the hospital care she received that she’s changed career – and is on her way to becoming a midwife.

Bailey Thompson knew that she wanted to ‘give back’ after medics saved her baby girl’s life, but she didn’t feel a career in healthcare was a realistic prospect after spending years working in business recruitment.

But thanks to a unique scheme, she became an NHS volunteer and is now studying for a midwifery degree.

The 36-year-old is one of hundreds of people across the UK who’ve taken part in the ‘Volunteer to Career’ programme - piloted by the national charity Helpforce and 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 Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS 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, assistant physiotherapists and midwives.

Alongside Bailey, those who’ve moved into the sector include former members of the armed forces community, refugees, over-50s, 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 vacant.

The call has the backing of two influential health think-tanks - The Health Foundation and The King’s Fund - as well as NHS Providers.

Bailey said: “If it wasn’t for Volunteer to Career, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to embark on a career as a midwife – I just wouldn’t have seen it as a career path that was open to me.”

After becoming pregnant for the first-time in 2020, Bailey might have been forgiven for thinking that giving birth was a fairly straightforward affair welcoming daughter Olivia into the world without any issues.

But after getting pregnant again two years later, little did she know that a completely different experience lay in store. The pregnancy was beset by a “myriad of complications” and she was placed under a multidisciplinary team at Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust.

At around the 34 week stage, Bailey experienced significant bleeding and was rushed into the operating theatre for an emergency caesarean section.

“There was a severe risk for both me and my baby,” explained Bailey. “It was a scary experience but one that was made easier because of the phenomenal team of medics, including the midwives.”

After giving birth to a second daughter, Sophie, who weighed just 4lbs 7oz, Bailey and her husband faced an anxious period as Sophie needed a C-PAP machine to aid her breathing for the first 24 hours. She also required the assistance of a gastric tube for feeding and was treated for jaundice on the neonatal unit.

“With the incredible care and nurture from the doctors, nurses and midwives, Sophie gradually improved and we were able to take her home after a couple of weeks,” said Bailey.

“During my time on the neonatal unit, I got a lot of exposure to the midwives and I found myself becoming more and more interested in their work. I kept asking them questions about their roles and what was involved – they were only too happy to satisfy my curiosity.

“One day, when I was in the hospital corridor, I spotted a poster on the wall for Helpforce’s Volunteer to Career scheme. I decided to investigate and I actually ended up being interviewed for the programme while Sophie was still undergoing treatment.”

Over the next year, Bailey completed over 200 hours of volunteering with the post-natal team at the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford.

“The team were incredibly supportive,” she recalled. “I learned so much in a short space of time. But I also worked hard to alleviate pressure on the team, taking on tea rounds, distributing meals and setting up beds for patients.”

Last year, Bailey applied for a three-year midwifery degree at the University of Staffordshire – gaining acceptance at the first time of asking. She has her heart firmly set on securing a permanent midwife role when she graduates in two years. “Having spent years working in business consultancy and specialising in talent recruitment, it’s definitely a massive career shift. But I’m driven by a desire to be able to provide other women with the same exceptional care that Sophie and I received – that’s ultimately what I’m in this for,” she said.

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 Bailey 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 inactive.

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 now.

Julia Clarke, Director of Public Participation at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, said:

“As Bailey’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.