Volunteers drivers save trust £200k

The challenge for the service – proving their impact

The volunteer drivers service at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust began in 2013 with eight active volunteers, providing free transport for patients attending outpatient appointments. The service quickly gained positive feedback from staff and patients but, there was limited opportunity to gain evidenced-based suggestions for improvement.

Paul Wharton, Head of Volunteering at the trust, recalled: “We recognised early on the need to evaluate the service to understand its impact. But we weren't sure how to extract insights from the data. We gathered as much information as possible to guide us, but struggled to turn it into meaningful intelligence."

The trust started working with Helpforce in 2020 after receiving funding from NHS England for the Helpforce Volunteer Innovation Programme. We then worked with Paul and his team again in 2024 to complete an evaluation of the transportation, collection and delivery services provided by the volunteer drivers. Running from April to August, we analysed existing data gathered by the volunteering team since 2013 and implemented new data collection to understand the service's impact.

Evaluating the service

Helpforce’s Insight and Impact service worked closely with Paul’s team to determine the impact of the driver service. Through this exercise, we:

• Pinpointed the key beneficiaries and the benefits that they would receive through this service

• Identified what data would be required and how to collect it to prove those benefits

Paul shared: “What stands out for me from working with the Helpforce’s Insight and Impact team is their genuine commitment to our work and their eagerness to help us improve.

“This shines through in their thoughtful questioning, which guided us in developing appropriate survey questions for staff, volunteers, and patients, pinpointing key issues. They also encouraged us to think of training that we could give to our volunteers to enhance patients’ experiences.

“Most importantly, their rigorous methodology instilled confidence that the evaluation was conducted to the highest standard, providing an accurate picture of our service and areas of improvement.”

The evaluation results:

Helpforce’s evaluation found that:

• The well-established volunteer drivers service is supporting large volumes of patients each year, delivered at an estimated 60% of the cost of outsourcing the same journeys to taxis. This translates to an estimated cost saving of £200k since the service began.

• Both patients and staff report very positive experiences with the drivers. Patients feel that the service had helped to reduce their anxiety alongside providing them with practical support. Benefits for staff members include helping to increase the quality of care they provide and increasing their confidence in patients being able to get to and from hospital and having the equipment and medication they need at home.

• Volunteers report being happy, well supported and well trained in their role, and agree that their volunteering is having a positive impact for patients, staff and the organisation.

Paul commented about the evaluation: "This evidence allowed us to confidently share our results with the Trust Board, reinforcing their trust in our service.

"Crucially, this outcome enables us to plan volunteer recruitment drives, ensuring we can extend our support to more patients in need."

Paul’s top tips

Paul shared key tips for other volunteering leads who want to continually improve their service:

• Make sure you evaluate your service to identify exactly where and how to improve

• Seek expert help if you lack evaluation skills. For instance, Helpforce helped us to focus on the key principles of evaluation and gave us a good understanding of what to do and why. This will ultimately save your time and produce more robust results.

Future plans for the service

Paul shared his future plans for the trust’s volunteering service, where they will continue recruiting volunteers for the Volunteer Driver Service and roll out a Volunteer to Career project. He is also looking at how volunteers could support paediatric patients while they are waiting for their treatment. He said: “I’m excited for the future as we constantly are on the lookout for new opportunities to develop the services that will enhance the experiences of our patients, wider community, staff and volunteers.”

You might be interested in:

• Volunteer Drivers Evaluation Report - North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust
• Helpforce Insight & Impact service