How volunteering can benefit the NHS

Elliot Bidgood, 26 November 2013

In recent years, political discourse has promoted civic action in society, due to the perceived limits of what the core state can at times do – this is Phillip Blond and Jesse Norman MP’s ‘Big Society’ or Lord Glasman and Jon Cruddas MP’s ‘One Nation Labour’ (Norman, Glasman and Cruddas have all spoken at Civitas this year, incidentally). It is interesting, however, to see how these visions apply in health and the extent to which, in Blond’s words, health services are provided by a “a mixture of state and people who give a damn”.

Late last week, new research by The King’s Fund shined some much-needed light on the scope and role of volunteering in the NHS, noting that although three million people in the UK volunteer in health and welfare organisations, little had been known up until now about what they do. It was found that NHS acute trusts have an average of 471 volunteers, though exact numbers varied widely and didn’t always bear resemblance to the size of the trust in question. Most respondents (who were senior nursing or HR staff) felt more could be done to measure the impact of volunteering on patient experience and care.

Tasks performed by volunteers are wide-ranging. They include guiding, meal assistance and handing out drinks, talking to patients and running errands, staffing libraries and hospital radio, administration, fundraising, transport and home-from-hospital and peer support. Interestingly, volunteers had reportedly gotten younger in the last five years and 87% of respondents felt the number of volunteers would increase in the next three. Perhaps most encouraging of all, every £1 invested in volunteering may be yielding “around £11 in added value”, it was said. But more information collection is still needed if trusts are to make better strategic use of volunteers, the King’s Fund researchers concluded.

I’d suggest that we can also learn from the cultures of foreign health services and the way in which they interact with volunteerism. Former deputy head at the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) Dr Peter Kyle observed that in the Israeli health system, where a commitment to civic action dating from the pre-state era is still embedded in its modern universal health structures, “the avoidance in a few instances of wholesale nationalisation has facilitated a more direct relationship with civil society, keeping the door open to volunteer participation on a scale unimaginable within parts of the British NHS, for example” (though Kyle did add that he recognised “volunteers have always played a significant and indispensable role in specific parts of the NHS” as well).

What’s clear is that civil society-spirited volunteering can benefit the NHS. What we need to know more about, though, is how to promote it further and put volunteers to best use.

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