Publish date: 5 November 2024
This International Volunteer Managers Day (5 November) we celebrate our volunteer leadership teams who are key to ensuring our volunteers play a crucial role in delivering outstanding patient care at the Trust. International Volunteer Managers Day also acknowledges our staff who are volunteer supervisors, providing essential guidance and encouragement to help volunteers make a meaningful impact. Finally, we celebrate our volunteers who are essential to our organisation and without strong leadership to guide them, we would not be able to achieve the remarkable impact made possible by their valuable time, commitment and dedication.
To mark the day Alison Webster, Director of Organisational Development said:
“This International Volunteer Managers Day we are celebrating change with a focus on “what’s our future normal?” In 2021 we set ourselves an ambitious vision to transform volunteering at the Trust, with volunteers making a bold difference by being involved in every aspect of our work. In this time, I’ve seen the place of professional volunteering leadership shift where we have inspired and supported our incredible staff to step forward for well led volunteering across the Trust. I would like to thank all our staff for ensuring our volunteers enjoy their experience at the Trust. I would also like to thank our volunteers for making a meaningful difference to outstanding patient care every time.”
Reflecting on his experience as Head of Volunteering, Rashpal Saini said:
“One of the most exciting things about leading volunteering at the Trust is seeing our ability to be unafraid to try new things and developing our own innovative solutions to engaging and supporting volunteers. From giving volunteers the power to shape their own bespoke opportunities by letting us know how we can meet our aims and objectives, picking and choosing from a range of low barrier micro-volunteering opportunities, to looking at portability of volunteers between our local NHS partners, by embracing balancing change and flexibility with the need to protect peoples safety and wellbeing at all times. I really do believe we are shaping the future normal of volunteering leadership here at West London NHS Trust.”
Volunteering and the Perinatal mental health service
The Perinatal mental health service offers support to women who are experiencing mental health issues during and post pregnancy for up to 24 months after they’ve had their baby. In 2021, the service developed a new Community Perinatal Support Volunteer role, to help coordinate friends and family feedback, encourage patients to attend/participate in support groups in a more personalised way. Volunteers supported the service with prevention and planning around patient non-attendance system pressures. The service took a whole team approach to support volunteers by designing local employment pathways for our career minded volunteers. This resulted in an impressive 57% volunteer to employment/education outcome from the service so far.
Darshita Patel, Perinatal Occupational Therapist and Volunteer Supervisor shared some of her insights:
“Supervising volunteers has been a pleasure and allowed me to continuously work on my own knowledge and skills. It has been helpful partnering with volunteers within our service as it has allowed us to build a sustainable workforce that is dedicated to the clients we work with. We were able to bring an extra member of the community into our therapy groups to bring a sense of cohesion and togetherness, as well adding a peer support element.”
Tania Thevarasa, Community Perinatal Support Volunteer said:
“I felt listened to and not judged by the Perinatal team and wanted to help other mums after I was discharged. I joined the Expert by Experience group to help indifferent ways, such as being involved in raising awareness through sharing my journey on the perinatal website and being involved in co-production and supporting other service needs. I saw the opportunity to volunteer and applied. I volunteered for 32 hours, supporting women and babies in the cooking group, I also collected friends and family feedback at the point of discharge from the service. Volunteering helped me build on my people skills and I was successful in securing a job as a Peer Support Worker.”
On 17 September 2024, colleagues from the service showcased their volunteer leadership and demonstrated how they addressed NHS workforce pressures through a local Volunteer to Career initiative at the national Capital AHP Workforce, Training & Education Innovation Showcase event.
Further information
You can read more about our latest volunteering leadership achievements in the 2023-24 Annual Report.
Find out more about volunteering at the Trust and discover the incredible opportunities on offer, by visiting the volunteering webpage.
To join the conversation on social media, please follow #IVMDay24.