Team working leads to success

An inspirational volunteer management team has been praised for the fortitude, resilience, and cheerfulness that they continued to display in demanding times for the voluntary services.

The team has continued to deliver a very successful programme for the vaccination service, bringing in 1,100 volunteers to support clinical teams and members of the public and are now ready with another 100 volunteers stepping up to support the Northgate vaccination site in September 2022.

They have also successfully returned over 190 volunteers to Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust services after the service had to step down all 450 volunteers due to Covid-19. This has been a challenging and complex task ensuring that the volunteers were safe to carry out their role in view of the Covid landscape and they are now supporting 60 different teams with effective and supportive volunteer placements.

“This achievement is phenomenal as each member of the team works extremely hard and are so passionate and dedicated about what they do. The support and care they show for their team members and volunteers are outstanding.”

The team are now focusing their efforts on increasing volunteer support in light of impending winter pressures. They have been innovative in introducing new roles to support services such as care parcels, mealtime support, ward helpers and a new discharge support role; all invaluable in enhancing the patients experience whilst in the care of SCFT.

They have demonstrated how volunteers are able to play an integral part in supporting the delivery of healthcare while also delivering two projects around befriending in the community and supporting the discharge of patients.

In addition the volunteer managers have also, been working with Health Education England with great success to introduce E learning statutory training for all volunteers, ensuring that the volunteers continue to be a well-trained workforce, introduced and implemented a new database management system to bring greater visibility to the service and enable the volunteers to apply directly for specific volunteering opportunities.

The team have also delivered large scale thank you events for all the volunteers and embedded a new process of reward and recognition for the volunteer workforce.

“In all that they do, the Volunteer Managers do it with immense enthusiasm, team working, strength, comradeship, and resilience. I feel both proud and privileged to lead such a team.” Mandy Cleaver, Voluntary and Community Development Lead

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