There are many volunteering organisations, but only Helpforce is working exclusively on high-impact volunteering in health and care, with the track record and expertise to galvanise our partners and achieve change at scale. Volunteers could play a much bigger role across health and care, and Helpforce exists to make this happen. By helping health and care organisations to accelerate the growth and impact of volunteering, frontline staff are happier, patients recover more quickly, and people get the support they need to keep them well in their community.
We are scaling capacity for volunteering in health and care, including ensuring better integration between volunteering through the NHS and in the community. Volunteers improve the lives of staff, patients, and our communities. Working with a wide range of partners, we bring innovative thinking and trusted experience to scale and spread proven volunteer services and fresh ideas. Importantly, we measure the benefits of volunteering for all involved, making sure that volunteering services are meeting their targets, and building up a unique bank of evidence of the impact of volunteers in this sector.
We are a leader in this sector, thanks to our evidence and expertise. We pushed to get volunteers included as part of the solution to the NHS staffing crisis in the NHS workforce plan. We brought together leaders of Integrated Care Systems to invest in, champion and scale up volunteering’s role at a systemic level – and we’re building on this foundation, thanks to a recent £800k lottery grant. We have designed life-changing programmes, such as the Volunteer to Career programme, bringing people into health and social care through volunteering, and helping the NHS to address workforce challenges across the system.
Established in 2017, Helpforce is now a nationally recognised charity that co-creates innovative solutions with health and care organisations. We enable organisations to maximise the potential of volunteering to improve outcomes for people and services and connect the people leading volunteers to improve quality together. Having joined Helpforce in 2019 and raised our profile, presence and impact, our Chief Executive, Mark Lever, will be retiring and so we are now looking for an outstanding leader to help us achieve our exciting ambitions for what volunteering can do across health and care.