Making a Difference Through Volunteering

Every year, Provide Community supports thousands of volunteer hours, enabling and equipping our volunteers to be where they are needed most. Alongside our volunteer programme, every colleague is given two fully paid days a year to volunteer with a charity or community group of their choice.

Lorraine Pendleton, Volunteer Manager, Learning and Development Team and ‘Get into Provide’ Programme Co-ordinator shares a snapshot of our volunteering programmes over the last year.

“During the last year, a number of our volunteers were trained in new roles, supporting many of the outpatient and assessment areas to meet and greet patients, taking temperatures and registering patients for Track and Trace.

Home Start

Essex

Home Start Essex is a network of fully trained volunteers that support families with young children during challenging times. Each year, its centres offer a range of services to over 600 families who are experiencing difficulties with post-natal depression, isolation, bereavement, and many other issues. Volunteers and staff at Home Start have supported over 800 families in the past year alone. The £19,500 grant will allow the charity to continue delivering much-needed support to families with young children who are struggling with the daily challenges they are facing.

Through our Governor donations and community grantgiving initiative, we have been able to help many other local causes including Kids Inspire, Support 4 Sight, CARA (Centre for Action on Rape and Sexual Abuse), Mistley Kids Club, The Peaceful Pony and Halstead Day Centre.

As Chair of the Council of Governors, I feel extremely privileged to be representing our members and playing a role in the team that decides where funding will go. Being a Community Interest Company enables us to go above and beyond our normal health and social care role and seeing the impact of that is truly heartening.

Nicola Yarnall, Chair of the Provide Community Council of Governors

As more clinics have re-opened fully across the services, we have more volunteers in Tissue Viability at Braintree Community Hospital and St. Peter’s Hospital in Maldon. The Speech and Language Therapists have also re-started their children’s community clinics and our volunteers have been supporting families during the assessments.

The Virtual Frailty Ward has increasingly used volunteers to support patients in the community. They have requested a wide range of services from de-cluttering and broken furniture removal, to gardening and befriending.

The last year has also seen innovations in recruiting and placing volunteers with the emphasis on getting people in to experience the workplace and encourage people to work for Provide Community and supported living.”

New Volunteer Hub

A new volunteer hub is being made ready to welcome new volunteers to St. Peter’s Hospital in Maldon, opening up the opportunity for volunteers to be on-site and deployed in a variety of roles within the hospital. The hub will also act as a volunteer-run teashop for patients, colleagues and visitors, and will support those volunteers who would like the opportunity to learn new skills and gain confidence, including Ukrainian volunteers who wish to practice their English language skills in a work environment.

Volunteer Reservist Programme

Provide Community is part of a new collaborative which is setting up a volunteer reservist programme to roster volunteers, to support hospital and community services during the winter pressures and other difficult periods. Around 200 volunteers will be recruited and trained so they can respond quickly to the needs of the service and patients.