April 17, 2025

Cumbria CVS is delighted to announce that it is now in the delivery phase of the Volunteering for Health Partnership for Lancashire and South Cumbria as of April 2025.

The three-year Volunteering for Health programme is part of NHS England’s response to the NHS Volunteering Taskforce, which brought together health charities, volunteers, clinicians, civil servants and policy makers. The Taskforce published its recommendations in June 2023, concluding that more can be done nationally and locally to maximise the benefits of volunteers and volunteering in the NHS, as a vital resource in delivering health and social care nationally and locally, whilst strengthening volunteering infrastructure.

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Charity (LTHC) was one of 15 partnerships across the UK to successfully bid for funding. Partnerships are made up of voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations, NHS Trusts, integrated care boards (ICBs), local authorities (LAs) and NHS charities.

Alongside LTHC, the successful partnership is made up of five VCFSE organisations, including Cumbria CVS, Lancashire Association of CVS, Community CVS, Spring North, and Volunteer Centre Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde. Volunteering for Health aims to develop volunteering infrastructure to realise the potential of volunteering in improving the experience and outcomes of people using our health and care systems.

It will do this through building the capacity and capability of organisations and local health and care systems. The partnership intends to share volunteer policies, processes, procedures, training and help to enhance relationships, and to improve the way volunteer data is captured and reported. The partnership also aims to test new models of volunteering and look at ways of embedding volunteering into the culture of our health and social care systems.

Through learning and evaluation, the programme will increase understanding of the impact of volunteering on health and care delivery and how it can be delivered and sustained most effectively. It will also look at how it can improve patient experience and patient outcomes, enable better staff experience and wellbeing and reduce pressure on staff and services.

Through collaborative working, partners will gain a deeper understanding of each other’s volunteering objectives. This will support the development of new cross-sector volunteer management capacity by harnessing innovative platforms to enhance volunteering practices, with a strong focus on understanding the volunteer experience.

The project aims to strengthen best practice in volunteer management, ultimately leading to improved health outcomes. It will align initiatives with Integrated Care Board (ICB) priorities, embedding volunteering within healthcare systems and fostering closer collaboration between the ICB and local organisations through strategic engagement.

Cumbria CVS is currently in the process of recruiting for a Volunteering for Health Strategic Lead for the programme, whose role will involve developing a strategic approach to enable and embed volunteering for all volunteer-involving health and care organisations at a place-based level. This will include establishing a new South Cumbria health and social care volunteering partnership, with coordination at the ICB level and connected to VCFSE networks, as well as developing a volunteering strategy.

The effectiveness of the strategy will be linked to how it reflects the needs of the area and the steps that we need to take to overcome any challenges or barriers in volunteering. We welcome input from key stakeholders.

For more information please contact Caroline Burden, Volunteering Manager (Westmorland and Furness) on caroline.burden@cumbriacvs.org.uk