HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

RURAL AFFAIRS CABINET PANEL

16 SEPTEMBER 2008 AT 2.00 P.M.

WORKING WITH VOLUNTEERS – BACKGROUND AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

Report of the Director of Environment

Author: Jez Perkins, Countryside Management Service, Tel: 01727 848168

Executive Member: Stuart Pile, Highways, Transport and Rural Affairs

1. PURPOSE OF THE REPORT

To update the Panel on the range and extent of volunteer activity and opportunities within the Environmental Management Group, and in particular the Countryside Management Service, and to seek comments on proposed improvements and further developments.

2. Summary

2.1 The Environment Department in particular the Countryside Management Service (CMS), works extensively with volunteers in a wide variety of ways – by direct recruitment, training and supervision through to advising and supporting local groups. At present the Countryside Management Service currently supports in excess of 1000 volunteers contributing to over 13,000 volunteer hours annually.

2.2 Volunteers bring benefits to the organisation such as increased capacity and additional knowledge and skills. These benefits are appreciated by CMS sponsors and the general public. Individuals who volunteer cite a range of positive factors such as opportunities to learn new skills or develop new ones, the chance to make a contribution to society and/or the environment and a way of making friends.

2.3 The CMS’s work with volunteers has grown on a project-by-project basis and now needs to be better co-ordinated. It is proposed to adopt the Investing In Volunteers standard, a nationally recognised scheme, to ensure the organisation meets and maintains the highest standard.

2.4 As well as aiming for the Investing In Volunteer standard, consideration is being given to enhancing volunteer actively in specific areas of work. The result would be the fuller involvement of volunteers in planning, preparation and long term oversight of projects.

3. Recommendations

·  That the Panel gives it views on the proposal to adopt the Investing In Volunteers standard, set out in Appendix 2.

·  That the Panel comment on the additional enhancements to volunteer activity described in section 4 of the report.

4. Background

4.1 As part of its core business, the Countryside Management Service supports community focussed projects across Hertfordshire. These programmes and projects vary in scale but all have a common thread in that they involve some input from volunteers. The involvement of volunteers in such projects is described in the following paragraphs.

4.2 Health Walk Leaders – Volunteer-led walks specifically designed for people wanting to improve their fitness and to help prevent or assist with a recovery from illness. This county wide programme is directly supported by the CMS through training programmes and financial support. The Health Walks programme has trained over 100 volunteer walk leaders, working across 7 different schemes.

4.3 Footpath Friends – Volunteers are assigned a promoted route to ‘monitor’ at least 4 times per year. Results and intelligence is fed back to the CMS, who in turn organise the necessary action. The volunteers are directly supported by the CMS through training, resources such as maps and survey forms and other ongoing support. There are currently 30 promoted routes being monitored in this way.

4.4 Parish Paths Partnership (P3) – Parish Council or interest groups focusing on the maintenance and improvement of the Rights of Way network. Through volunteers, each active parish or group devises an annual action plan / work programme. The plans are assessed by CMS and Rights of Way officers and small grants are made available by the County Council to enable improvement work to be completed and/or a finance package put together.

4.5 Friends Groups – Site and locality-based groups often working on local authority owned green space such as Local Nature Reserves, and whose main focus tends to be practical habitat management and site improvements. Working to agreed site plans, much of their work is carried out without direct supervision. Some groups are involved in fund raising and local promotion such as guided walks. Friends Groups are directly supported by the CMS through insurance, risk assessment, training, and guidance much of which is articulated in a Friends Group pack.

4.6 Practical conservation volunteers – Two groups of peripatetic volunteers, each working from the two CMS Area bases, carrying out practical habitat and traditional estate management tasks, much of which takes place on local authority owned sites. Developed, programmed and supervised by CMS Officers.

4.7 Tree Wardens – Working within Dacorum Borough and St Albans District Council’s these volunteers are involved in all aspects relating to trees such as planting, surveys and monitoring. In support of the above two District Council sponsors, the role of the CMS is to recruit and train new tree wardens with the local authority acting as the first point of contact regarding any issues relating to trees.

4.8 Office based volunteers – ad hoc arrangements by where a volunteer will be based at the CMS offices, sometimes carrying out general duties, but occasionally working to support specific projects/programmes such as monitoring, processing and collating Footpath Friends activity.

4.9 Wood Wardens – Operating out of the North and Eastern Area centred on the Broxbourne Wood NNR complex. The main focus is practical habitat management and site improvements within these woodlands. This group is directly supported by the CMS through insurance, risk assessment and the provision of tools.

4.10 Corporate volunteers – Ad hoc arrangements with businesses seeking ‘Team building’ days. This can take the form of one off events or long term commitments such as with HSBC working within a local woodland as part of their Corporate Strategy and Social Responsibility objective.

See Appendix 1 for further details on current volunteer activity.

5. ANALYSIS AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

5.1 The voluntary activity described is either directly delivered or substantially supported by the CMS. Whilst the range of activity means that a ‘one size fits all’ approach is not practical, there is no overarching framework that ties together the various programmes/projects. As each has grown and developed separately, so too has the management and support.

5.2 In order for the CMS to improve its service to volunteers and in turn to secure enhanced and appropriate contributions from them it is proposed to explore the benefits of achieving the ‘Investing In Volunteers’ award. Investing in Volunteers is the UK quality standard for all organisations which involve volunteers in their work. The Standard enables organisations to comprehensively review their volunteer management, and also publicly demonstrates their commitment to volunteering. The standard is managed locally by the lead volunteer development agency of each individual county of the UK. In Hertfordshire this is Volunteer Centres Hertfordshire. This is a network of the Local Volunteer Centres operating across the county.

5.3 The ‘Investing in Volunteers’ Standard comprises ten indicators. These indicators have been developed to cover all the aspects of volunteer management and the commitments needed to ensure benefits are realised by the individual and the organisation.

5.4 The development and adoption of a coordinated and cohesive approach, based on the Investing in Volunteers standard, will enable improvements to operational efficiency and effectiveness, and increase the standard and opportunity for volunteer contribution across the range of programmes and projects.

See Appendix 2 for details of the Investing in Volunteers Standard.

5.5 To improve the service we provide to volunteers and therefore improve the service we provide to our sponsors and the public there are additional enhancements outside of the ‘Investing in Volunteers’ standard that could be achieved:-

·  Volunteers could be more widely deployed across the Environment service. For instance the Footpath Friends volunteers could monitor the wider Rights of Way network thus assisting the Rights of Way Service. At present information resulting from the Footpath Friends surveys are cross referenced by CMS Officers and used to inform Parish Councils when they are developing their P3 work programmes. However this is currently done ad hoc, so a procedure could be developed to formally incorporate this information.

·  The traditional practical conservation volunteers can be developed to be more self sustaining. Training appropriate volunteers to enable them to ‘mentor’ new volunteers would relieve some of the pressure on paid members of staff. Also encouraging these volunteers to become more involved in the process behind each practical task such as designing the task, risk assessments and preparing tools and equipment would be very beneficial.

·  Certain projects lend themselves very well to accommodating volunteers. One such project is Health Walks. This project already employs over 100 volunteers to lead walks. However there are a host of activities that happen ‘back stage’ that would benefit from volunteer input. Such activities include assisting with information distribution, promotion, completing a training needs assessment and organising the subsequent training.

·  Building on the ‘Green Apprentice Scheme’, a partnership project between the CMS and Groundwork Hertfordshire where graduates work for six months at CMS then six months at Groundwork Hertfordshire. A graduate apprenticeship scheme could be investigated, much like the apprenticeship scheme of traditional industry or ‘gap’ year students. For example ‘Volunteer Apprentices’, rather than receiving a salary, would receive expenses and full training and be given all the skills that are needed to gain permanent employment.

6. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

6.1 Around £3,000 has been allocated from existing budgets to meet the direct cost of the external Investing in Volunteers assessment. Whilst further work needs to be done, it is not anticipated that the main improvements and development work will require any additional funding. If in the event that additional funding is needed, the CMS will look to sources of grant aid to support implementation.

080916 Volunteers