Volunteer to Career in healthcare
A programme for the Armed Forces communityThis programme helps health and care organisations create a volunteering pathway for members of the Armed Forces community to potentially join the healthcare workforce.
About the programme
This programme is for all members of the Armed Forces community who are 18 and above. It offers a new approach to bringing these expert and talented individuals into the healthcare workforce. Volunteer to Career provides a ‘try-before-you-buy' opportunity, where they get experience and support in volunteering roles working in clinical or non-clinical areas that interest them.
More information about how this programme works, career pathways, and success stories are in the brochure.
I can’t tell you the impact the Volunteer to Career programme has had on my life. I'm overjoyed when I was offered the job in the Pathology department at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital after completing this programme. I spent the last 20 years as a military wife, now with this new career, this feels like a whole new chapter of my life: it’s time for me, for my career and my dreams.
Angie Duffin
What we aim to achieve:
Thanks to generous funding from the Swire Charitable Trust, Helpforce is supporting a group of health and care organisations to deliver and evaluate projects and identify findings to help the wider health and care sector understand the best way to recruit and support members of the Armed Forces community to complete the Volunteer to Career programme.
By March 2026, we aim to:
Attract 400 members of the Armed Forces community to the programme
Get 66% of participants of the programme to embark on careers, education or training in health and care
Ensure 85% of staff agree volunteers helped improve quality of service
It’s a double win
Volunteers will:
- Have the opportunity to help people get better
- Build up their employability confidence
- Identify a clear career pathway to fully achieve their potentional
Organisations will:
- Demonstrate their continued commitment to supporting the Armed Forces community, as set out in the Armed Forces Covenant
- Enhance staff and patients' experience as they benefit from the expertise and abilities that members of the Armed Forces community bring – immediately as volunteers and potentially as employees
Our partners:
We are delighted to already be supporting 11 health and care organisations as part of this programme:
- County Durham and Darlington NHS FT
- Dorset County Hospital NHS FT
- Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust
- Livewell Southwest (Plymouth)
- Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust
- North Tees and Hartlepool NHS FT
- Saint Catherine’s Hospice
- Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust
- Somerset NHS Foundation Trust
- South Tees Hospitals NHS FT
- Tees, Esk, and Wear Valleys NHS FT
Our funding allows us to offer our help more health and care organisations for free.
If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact Mark Burrett, Programme Manager, to find out more.
Volunteer to Career in action
Find out more about Helpforce
How we can help you
Here we explain how we can help you meet key challenges and the specialist services that allow us to do this.
Developing volunteering services
Expert support to develop volunteering services that help solve your organisational challenges and reduce operational pressures.
Your Network
At Helpforce, we believe in the value of community and that’s why we created the Network, a free online peer community for professionals with an interest in volunteering in health and care to share your knowledge, learn from peers and find practical support and resources.
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