Pre-Volunteering Training Partner Confirmed: Bridge Employment

As part of the Sheffield Volunteering Strategy, Bridge Employment are set to put together a programme of Pre-Volunteering Training for people in Sheffield who have disabilities, learning difficulties and mental health problems. 

Subject to successful funding bids in the New Year, Bridge Employment have confirmed that they will be able to run a series of 8-week training programmes to encourage and support people who typically face barriers to volunteering, to enable them to participate.  This is exciting news, as it will hopefully enable eighty people per year from all areas of Sheffield to access volunteering opportunities who would ordinarily find it very difficult to do so. 

The content of the training will be informed by guidance from the Supporting Volunteers Focus Group (set up during the Volunteering Strategy consultation period, and comprising representatives from a range of charities working with people with support needs such as physical and sensory disabilities, mental health problems, asylum seekers and ex-offenders).  The Focus Group identified a 'wish list' of key areas that such a programme would tackle.  Topics are likely to include: The Benefits of Volunteering, Rights & Responsibilities, Time Managment, Effects on Welfare Benefits, Career Development Opportunities, Team-working, Transport Tips, Communication Skills, and potentially other specific skills around customer care, food hygiene and fundraising.

The Pre-Volunteering Training will be open to anybody who falls into Bridge Employment's client group (i.e. learning disabilities, mental health problems and other disabilities), so if you work with people who could benefit from this scheme get in touch!  c.walsh@vas.org.uk

For more information on Bridge Employment: http://www.bridgeemployment.org.uk/

High Hopes for a Sheffield Compact Code of Practice for Volunteering

It's been a busy week this week, with meetings galore about the Sheffield Volunteering Strategy.  Amongst those meetings was one with the Sheffield Health Compact.  Sheffield is rather unusual in that it has two Compacts: one between the voluntary sector and the local authority(http://prospectus.shu.ac.uk/CourseEntry.cfm?CourseId=518 ) and another between the voluntary sector and the NHS (http://www.sheffieldnhscompact.co.uk/ ).  However work is now under way to bring them together.  And what better piece of work to start the ball rolling than a Volunteering Code of Practice?!

Many areas already have Volunteering Codes of Practice as part of their local Compact Agreements, but to date that has not been the case in the Steel City.  The development of the Volunteering Strategy is now giving the opportunity to address that, and with the added impetus of aligning the two Compact Agreements hopes are high that such a Code will be adopted here. The aims of adopting the Volunteering Code of Practice in Sheffield are to ensure that the VCS and Public Sector are committed to maintaining best practice in the promotion, development and celebration of volunteering, and to make sure that organisations which have signed up to the Compact work with volunteers in a consistent way.  Each of Sheffield's Compacts has its own steering group, and on Wednesday the Health Compact Steering Group joined its local authority counterpart in giving its endorsement to the principle of adopting a Volunteering Code.

A draft Volunteering Code of Practice has already been drafted in consultation with the VCS, public and private sector (click on the link on the right to see the June Partners in Time event for more details).  This draft is now being examined by each of the Compact steering groups, who will feed their comments back by Christmas.  A re-draft will then be taken back to them in the New Year, so watch this space in 2010 for the fully-adopted Code!

Steering Group: Strategy Will Strengthen Volunteering

Sheffield's Volunteering Strategy Steering Group has been meeting every two months since May 2009 to guide the development of the business plan.  It comprises a range of influential figures from across the city's voluntary and community sector and the public sector:

Nick Warren, CEO, Voluntary Action Sheffield

Kirstie Haines, Interim Director, Sheffield First Partnership

Vince Roberts, Partnership & Local Action Manager, Sheffield City Council

Jeanette Miller, Head of Patient Experience & Engagement, NHS Sheffield

Sarah Shaw, Business Coordinator, Business in the Community

Julia South, Manager, Volunteer Centre Sheffield

This week the group came together once more at The Circle, to examine how the strategy has progressed since the Partners in Time 2 (Call to Action) consultation event that took place at the end of September.  Agreement was reached to remove certain actions which were deemed by consultation participants as unlikely to have high impact (such as the development of family volunteering opportunities), amend others (including changing the plan for an online forum for volunteer coordinators to an online 'notice-board')  and to add a few more (such as embedding volunteering referrals within the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme).

All in all, the steering group meeting was a very positive one, and confidence is high in the likelihood of the strategy to achieve real success!