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!