By Judith Ugwumadu | 22 November 2013
NHS hospitals gain £11 for every £1 invested in volunteers, according to the King’s Fund think-tank.
Its Volunteering in acute trusts in England: understanding the scale and impact report, published yesterday, found that there were more than 78,000 volunteers in hospitals across the UK contributing over 13 million hours per year.
Based on current NHS pay rates this generated £11 for every £1 invested in the training and management of volunteers. In the average acute trust there are almost 500 volunteers supporting the health service.
Amy Galea, senior policy researcher at the King’s Fund, said: ‘Volunteering has a critical role to play in improving services for patients. It supports many national aspirations such as improving the experience of patients, building stronger relationships between services and communities and creating social value.
‘Our survey shows that volunteers are being used in increasingly imaginative ways which are valued highly by patients, staff and the public. The challenge now is for the NHS to develop in more detail its understanding of the impact that volunteers have – this should help to enable all hospitals to harness the potential of volunteering.’
The report was sponsored by the Department of Health and captured the views of almost 100 acute trusts highlighting the benefits volunteers brought to the health service.
Trusts said volunteers played a ‘critical role; in improving patient experience.
‘Volunteers fulfil a variety of different roles, from befriending to collecting survey data, supporting patients to eat well and supporting the running of mock hospital inspections,’ the report noted.
However, the King’s Fund said it was difficult to assess the benefits volunteers provided due to a lack of trusts ‘formally measuring the impact of volunteers at present’.
Moreover, the report found that many hospitals were not benefiting from volunteers as much as they could do. It noted considerable variation in the number of volunteers; some trusts reported as few as 35 helpers, while others had 1,300. The number of volunteers was not necessarily linked to the size of the trust, the report said.
However, volunteering is a growth area, the King’s Fund said. The vast majority (87%) of trusts said they expected the number of volunteers to increase over the next three years, in most cases by more than 25%. No one said that they expected it to decrease.
The profile of volunteers had also changed. Two-thirds of trusts said volunteers are now younger compared to five years ago and more than half (56%) said they were more ethnically diverse.
But more research is needed to understand the opportunities available so that the benefits of volunteering could be better understood and used to improve planning, evaluation and service changes.
