Volunteer Coordinator – (Consultancy Pilot)
INTRODUCTION
This is an opportunity for a suitable consultant to work with us as a project coordinator/volunteer manager.
The purpose of our project is to recruit, train and support volunteers in care homes. We believe there is a huge untapped potential for volunteers to enhance the lives of residents in care homes and we are sure that there are many people who would like to volunteer their services in this way.
We also know that volunteers are not used in Care Homes to any large extent. Care homes sometimes find it challenging to take on volunteers because of the difficulty in finding suitable volunteers, because of vetting and administration problems and also the burden of day to day management of the work of volunteers. We want to take on these responsibilities for the homes.
Other barriers include
•the lack of understanding and awareness by volunteers of the needs and difficulties of residents,
•the extra burden placed on care staff by volunteers,
•the potential for conflict between carers and volunteers,
•the danger that volunteers may unwittingly try to carry out inappropriate functions.
We think that providing a comprehensive and rigorous training programme and on-going support for the volunteers and their Care Homes will help alleviate these problems.
PILOT PROJECT
We have received enthusiastic responses to our ideas from all quarters including the main care home umbrella groups, Department of Health and Norman Lamb, and Lord Bichard, Chair of the Social Care Institute of Excellence who will be discussing our project with Andrea Sutcliffe, Chief Inspector for Social Care at CQC.
To confirm our ideas will work in practice, and to attract funding we want to run a pilot and we have now reached agreement with a care home group (Orders of St John Care Trust) and Wiltshire Council (who has promised some funding) to run a pilot in three care homes in Salisbury. We hope to start recruiting volunteers in May, and then carry out our comprehensive training and support programme with them. (Details of this are in our attached training summary).
OSJCT have kindly agreed to make one of their staff available on a part time basis to train and support our volunteers. We would be looking for another person to work in partnership with her to share in the training and support, and to work with her to manage the pilot. This person would be likely to be more involved in the preparation and planning stage, and take a leading role in recruitment of volunteers.
There is a job description for a volunteer manager (as it would be post-pilot), but we realise that it probably would not be possible to achieve the whole of this role in this limited local pilot.
CONSULTANT
We are looking for someone who might be willing to work on a consultancy or perhaps employed basis? The cohort of about 24 volunteers would be drawn from the Salisbury area, so it would be helpful if the person was local to this region. The intended length of the pilot is six months, but the work would be front-loaded with some preparatory work before May, and the training would be five two-hour sessions in the first five weeks. Support for the volunteers, and their care homes, in their placements during those weeks, and subsequently, would also be part of the role.
We will have the active support for the pilot of Wiltshire Volunteer Centre (Develop) and our local AgeUK branch. We are also meeting shortly with the Chair of Wiltshire Healthwatch.
We will also be looking separately for independent monitoring and evaluation of the pilot.
We realise we should always keep in mind the roll-out of the project, post-pilot. We have looked at a number of models for this, and have examined the Citizens Advice model of training and branch organisation, and have visited Samaritans HQ to talk to them about their volunteer recruitment, training, support and deployment programmes. If our pilot is successful, we hope we would have a national presence in the not too distant future.
CONTACT: Norman Edwards, For Care Home VolunteersMOB: 07740 285289