Kingston Hospital Volunteering Service – a continuing partnership and successful business case

Working with Helpforce, the ‘data alchemist’

Laura Greene, Head of Volunteering and Community Partnerships at the Trust, recalled: “When I came into post in 2013, it was clear to me that our volunteering service wasn’t achieving all it could, in part because we didn’t have the skills or manpower to evaluate the full scope and scale of our volunteering service. This stopped us from having a more strategic role in the Trust and we wanted to change that.”

Engaging with Helpforce was part of how Laura planned to do this, and the start of a continuing productive partnership between the Trust and our charity.

Laura continued: “The Helpforce Insight and Impact team continue to help us with evaluating our services. I see them as a data alchemist, turning raw data into evidenced outcomes that have proved the value of our services time and time again.”

Throughout the partnership, Helpforce's Insight and Impact team have set up three evaluation frameworks to explore the impact of the Trust’s Volunteering Community and Outreach Services: community exercise, community rehabilitation and discharge support. Each framework was tailored to the activities and anticipated benefits of the volunteers’ support.

Sibel Akbiyik, Helpforce research analyst, explained: “We met the volunteering team service leads regularly to ensure they were on track with collecting their data. We also acted as a critical friend, providing emerging insights into potential areas of service improvement and informing them of the overall development of these services. Finally, we conducted a full evaluation of each service, demonstrating the impact volunteers were having, in turn helping to make the case for sustaining and scaling up the service.”

The evaluation results

Helpforce’s evaluation reports across the three Volunteering Community and Outreach services found:

• Improves physical patient outcomes: community exercise volunteers maintained or improved strength, mobility and balance for 100% of patients who participated in the 8-week programme. 

• Reduces risk of readmission: The readmission rate of patients who received volunteer support was considerably lower (9%) compared to the control group (25%)

• Increases community connectivity: 54% of patients were helped to get in contact with local groups or support services after help from the discharge support service.

Using this evidence, Laura’s team could demonstrate the value of the Volunteering Community and Outreach Service in supporting the trust, social care and the wider health and care system. The resulting business case to the trust secured £50,900 per year to sustainably continue offering their services to patients in the hospital and in the community. “Besides the tangible result from securing the funding” Laura told us, “the support from Helpforce has helped earn us a seat at strategic meetings with our Trust Board. Without the evidence, I would not have the confidence and credibility to discuss the strategic and impactful role that community and outreach volunteer services can play.

“Having seen the impact of an evidence-based approach to volunteer service development, the team are now 100% behind the concept and have worked with the Helpforce Insight and Impact team to evaluate a range of our core and flagship roles, including our established emergency department volunteer role.”

What’s happening next

Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s volunteering services will continue to deliver and develop vital services to people in the hospital and community.

Helpforce is delighted with the support we’ve been able to offer to-date and that we will continue to help the Kingston team understand what works well and what can improve.

We’re also due to start a Volunteer to Career project at the Trust. The project will allow volunteers who have qualified overseas as Allied Health Care Professionals to explore careers in both acute and community NHS health care and acquire the requisite experience to qualify for NHS professional roles.

Laura said: “Helpforce are a lovely team of people. I honestly can’t thank them enough for providing the methodology, analysis and programme support we needed to quantify the impact of these services, not just in terms of benefits to patients and staff, but wider ROI across systems.”

Laura’s tips and advice:

Laura’s top tips for volunteering leads when making a business case for sustaining or extending services is:

• Be persistent

• Don’t take no for an answer

• Be flexible with your service design – it must meet the organisation’s changing needs

• Data comes first; then weave your narrative for funding based on the facts.

You might be interested in:

• Kingston Hospital NHS FT's business case
• Nesta Helping in Hospitals: business case toolkit
• Helpforce partner awarded funding to deliver Falls Prevention Volunteering service in GP practices and care homes