Five things to learn about volunteering in health and social care

five things to learn about volunteering in health and social care

4 December 2020

by Dr Jurgen Grotz

For over two decades the Institute for Volunteering Research (IVR) has been exploring the role of volunteering in health and social care. In 2008, we published a practical guide to assessing the impact of volunteering in the NHS. In 2012 we published good practice case studies, and as far back as 2006 we looked at volunteering as a form of participation in health and social care.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into sharp relief, the complexities of volunteering in health and social care. In response IVR brought together Patients and Members of the Public with academics from around the UK to explore the most pressing topics for research.

On the 30th of October 2020, Jurgen Grotz the director of IVR, Sarah Hanson from UEA and Jane South from Leeds Beckett University jointly organised an online symposium, and on the 20th November 2020 IVR hosted a half day online conference for the Voluntary Sector Studies Network. The symposium and the conference helped us identify research priorities that are emerging from volunteering during COVID-19. Recordings of both session one and session two of the webinar are available to watch now.

Here are the five key messages from the events and how we intend to take each forward:

The Role of Volunteering in Challenging 'Disadvantage and Inequalities'

The effects of pandemic policy making, for example, on older volunteers, were highlighted throughout the events, with harrowing examples of how pandemic policies exacerbated the effects of disadvantage and inequalities in health and social care. The Centre for Health Promotion Research, Leeds Beckett University will now organise a symposium specifically looking at the role of volunteering in challenging disadvantage and inequalities. We are looking for academic and civil society partners to collaborate with in organising and delivering relevant content.

The Role of 'Participation Democracy and Citizenship'

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic the NHS planned to double the number of volunteers and increase patient and public involvement in its decision making. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic we have also seen the recruitment of 750.000 NHS responder volunteers. The latter especially highlighted that volunteer involvement and patient and public involvement are complex activities through which we can extend collaborations with people from groups not ordinarily part of health and social care services. However, it also highlighted that it is not helpful to present volunteers as simply ‘alternative deliverers’ of services who can be deployed at will, rather they can have active roles in reshaping how health and social care services are delivered. The Institute for Volunteering Research will now organise a webinar specifically looking at the role of volunteering in health and social care as a form of participation. We are looking for academic and civil society partners to collaborate with to organise this.

The Role of 'Infrastructure'

During the events participants highlighted the role of local volunteering infrastructure in supporting or hindering the volunteering effort in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Local community organisations have been some of the quickest to ‘pivot’ to meet emergent needs. The recent report by the House of Lords Select Public Services Select Committee on lessons from COVID-19 vividly illustrates the points raised. Community-based organisations or anchors have been key to this local effort, as this recent Locality report highlights. IVR and Leeds Beckett are inviting academic and civil society partners to jointly host an event to further explore this. Get in touch if you are interested.

The Role of 'Activism'

Much has been made of the role of ‘Mutual Aid Associations’ during the pandemic. Contributions during our recent events as well as early findings from ongoing research very strongly suggest that there is currently insufficient knowledge about these movements to support what seems to be an urgent desire from policy makers to co-opt them into a wider emergency and recovery social welfare and health and social care response. IVR and Leeds Beckett are inviting academic and civil society partners to jointly host an event to further explore this. Get in touch if you are interested.

The Role of 'Place'

The pandemic has not only disrupted all our individual lives but also long-standing relationships and understandings between voluntary action and governments at their various levels of ‘place’. The differing responses in the four nations of the UK have been most striking and are currently being explored in a major study, in a partnership between six UK universities and representatives from a variety of voluntary organisations, including the four key voluntary sector infrastructure bodies for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. However, ‘place’ is much more complex than just nationality. IVR and Leeds Beckett are inviting academic and civil society partners to jointly host an event to further explore this. Get in touch if you are interested.

In the wake of the COVID-19 the role of volunteering in health and social care will be transforming. In order to understand such a transformation, post pandemic policy making will need compelling evidence and will need science to provide this evidence in a systematic an academically robust way, in an inclusive effort building on the experiential knowledge of patients and the public.