Newsletter April 2004
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Image » Can't see the wood from the trees on involving ex-offenders?
This issue:
Taking a risk:
Involving ex-offenders
Drawing Windows:
Volunteer Centre service review
Letter from South Edinburgh:
Putting the kettle on
Meet the Teams
Introductions
Sorry, I don’t do charity
Young people & volunteering
Volunteer Centre Services
Everything we do...
20 Years of Volunteers Week
Get involved in 2004
Taking a Risk
Involving individuals with criminal records has always posed a dilemma for volunteer managers - and never more so than now. Many of us in the volunteering sector believe that for all ex-offenders, removing the opportunity to re-offend and providing meaningful activity will reduce the likelihood of re-offending behaviour. Many organisations, however, are dissuaded from putting this idea into practice because of the potential risks involved and the fear of attracting unwelcome attention from the media. It is unfortunate that certain parts of the press delight in revealing the whereabouts of ex-offenders particularly, it would seem, if they are attempting to engage in some worthwhile work in the community.
From our experience at the Volunteer Centre we know of several individuals who have literally turned their lives around through volunteering, and of organisations whose work depends on the time, effort and sheer hard work of men and women whose pasts contain a vast array of serious offences.
If you manage volunteers, your concerns should be : to protect people, to deliver good services and care to service users; and to ensure your volunteers have roles that are both enjoyable and rewarding. It is therefore vital that sound recruitment, selection and supervision procedures are in place for all volunteers, not just those who declare a criminal record. Refer to our fact sheet B5 053 “Safer Involvement of Volunteers with Vulernable Clients” for guidance and more information.
And remember – don’t let the press have a field-day with scare stories about offenders who re-offend. Inform them of good news about your volunteers and what they are contributing to your project and to your community. You might also consider getting involved in our “Volunteers’ Life Stories” project which aims to build a bank of profiles on local volunteers which will be used for media and marketing.
Marion Findlay
Drawing Windows
Years ago, while working at a children’s adventure holiday centre, I knew a guy who, despite his youth, behaved like a 40-something middle manager not unlike David Brent. His mannerisms were so strong and so managerial that his physical appearance had altered to suit. He occupied his flesh with all the over-stuffed ostentation of a posh sofa in an otherwise minimalist hotel lobby. He exuded the kind of confidence which implied that he had a Mercedes parked round the corner, the world was his oyster and that he was Destined for Great Things. He was apparently at perfect ease communicating to his superiors in age and wisdom – seemed to share some sense of being one of the good old boys with people he hardly knew.
I wasn’t alone in hating him. Around him the atmosphere was one of pressure, of calamities narrowly averted by his quick thinking and managerial control. His motto for dealing with difficult situations was: “Stand back, draw a window around the situation and think about what you see.” I loathe the fact that this phrase is what springs to mind now, 10 years later, as the Volunteer Centre takes a collective step back, draws a window around its situation, and considers what it sees. Not that there’s any impending crisis you understand, it’s just that we need to do this every couple of years to make sure we’re on track, that what we do is still relevant, and that we’re doing it well.
At the end of last year there were a total of 350 respondents to surveys across 3 distinct areas of the Volunteer Centre’s work. This is what they thought of us:
Volunteers
Three distinct groups of volunteers /
potential volunteers were identified for the
service review: the general public, under 25s, and volunteers referred
to the Support and Advice Team.
Volunteers referred to the Support and Advice Team have a variety of additional support needs. This group found their experience of Volunteer Centre services to be very positive, with 95% of respondents noting an improvement in their health as a result of their volunteering. The most commonly sited improvements were longer periods of good health, an increased ability to cope with change / crisis, increased physical fitness, and a better sleep pattern.
This group also placed an emphasis on the value of volunteering in helping them prepare for and access employment opportunities. When asked what effect volunteering had had one volunteer commented that volunteering had made “…a 100% difference. I felt confident enough to give up all my benefits on which I was totally dependent for more than ten years and return to full time employment.“ Another simply wrote “It saved my life”.
Of the general public, the majority of respondents found all aspects of our service excellent.
The most popular reasons for volunteering are: to learn new skills, to use spare time well, to improve things, and to meet new people. This group find the Volunteer Centre to be “Friendly, well organised, a variety of services on offer, very informative”. 31% of people heard about us via the internet, 33% by word of mouth and 31% via other organisations.
49% of the tech savvy younger generation heard about us via the internet. Most of this group volunteers in order to help others, or to get work experience. Compared with other volunteers the under 25s weren’t really interested in volunteering to “use their spare time well”, or in order to “meet new people”.
Volunteer–Involving Organisations
Organisations think we are doing pretty well:
94% of organisations found our administrative
performance good or very good. On average Volunteer Centre
services resulted in the recruitment of around 25% of
an organisation’s volunteers. 96%
of organisations believe that Volunteer Centre Edinburgh has improved public
awareness
of volunteering.
The most popular information and advice services are, in descending order of priority: advice, Volunteer Centre website, this newsletter, our weekly email bulletins and information briefing sheets. 88% of organisations said that our advice, information or training services had a significant or highly significant impact on their service.
The newsletter is “easy to read, accessible and keeps us up to date with developments in the volunteering field”; email bulletins are “fun to read and a bit eccentric” and our “...wonderful website is an important focus for the voluntary scene in Edinburgh.”
Training continues to be well received with 91% of organisations saying that training for volunteers was helpful, and 100% describing training for volunteer managers as helpful. One happy customer writes: “I have always found the Volunteer Centre really helpful and informative. The training is excellent!”
Referrers
Referrers can be doctors, social workers, occupational therapists or project workers - anyone involved in clinical or support work. They refer around 400 volunteers a year to the Support and Advice Team.
Referrers and the volunteers they refer to us are in accord about the benefits of our service. Most referrers noted an increased level of fitness, longer periods of good health, an increased ability to cope with change / crisis, and a reduced level of dependency on clinical / support staff.
“ I currently work with clients who have severe and enduring mental health problems. I find it extremely helpful when (volunteer centre) staff offer clients reassurance and support in placements.”
Room for improvement
All groups identified gaps in our service.
Volunteers referred to the Support and Advice Team, the referrers themselves and volunteer-involving organisations were all keen to see us provide some personal development skills training. Buddying, a Preparation for Voluntary Work Course, and an email bulletin were also identified as desirable areas for more work by both referrers and referred. We are hoping to source funding to address some of these areas.
70% of the ‘general public’ thought that a late opening would be useful. As a result of the survey the Volunteer Centre will be opening until 7pm on Thursdays for a trial period starting soon.
Some people noted that the search facility on the website could be improved to make finding opportunities easier. Young volunteers were strongly in favour of having a website of their own. Work on these areas has been planned for this year.
The majority of organisations are keen to see us working more closely with local communities. To this end we will be exploring the possibility of setting up more initiatives like our satellite Volunteer Centre South Edinburgh project, and to continue to apply the working model recently formulated during a pilot project in Broomhouse.
84% of respondents were keen to see the development of an ‘Investors in People’ style scheme for volunteering. Since we produced the survey we’ve heard that plans are afoot on a national level for such a scheme, and we will be following developments closely.
A number of people commented that we could raise the profile of volunteering and recruit more individuals by advertising more widely. Our marketing group is constantly raising its game, and since the time of the survey we have run around 13 ads in the Metro and Big Issue.
So, to summarise, we have ‘drawn a window around our situation’ and gazed at the view. Despite the uncertainties about funding that most organisations share, there is now more clarity about what our customers need and what we will do to answer those needs.
Congratulations to the Social Work Addictions Team who, ironically, won the two bottles of champagne in the organisations’ survey prize draw.
Mark Steven
Letter from South Edinburgh
As Radio 4’s Alistair Cook leaves “Letter from America” after 57 years, Nick Woodhead, who started working in Gilmerton establishing Volunteer Centre South Edinburgh in November last year, picks up the torch with his second “Letter from South Edinburgh”. (He kind of hopes he won’t still be writing them in 2061). On this occasion he reflects on a barrier preventing smaller organisations engaging volunteers.
A few months ago I was asked by a colleague to do them a favour. He wanted me to stay an extra 30 minutes to help him put some stuff in envelopes for a mailout he needed to finish before he went on holiday next day. I agreed to do it.
Pleased to help. But then he revealed that the favour entailed rather more than I had bargained for. Could I just stick the stamps on 500 envelopes in the morning? In subsequent days I discovered I had become the person fielding the queries that the letters generated.
I felt a bit put out. “Giving an inch and taking a mile” is a phrase that came into my mind closely followed by “Once bitten twice shy”. I would certainly be careful about offering again. I wonder if this is how organisations feel when I encourage them to take on volunteers.
The other week I visited a small project run by two women, both volunteers. They run a social club for local elderly residents. Bingo, carpet bowls, cups of tea, a few biscuits. The occasional trip. They are well organised, efficient, dedicated and probably wouldn’t have considered engaging a volunteer if I hadn’t approached them.
I felt that a local person would benefit from being involved in the
organisation. They would be doing that person, their community and
the Volunteer Centre
a favour by offering an opportunity. One of the organisers came in
to see me.
We got half way through the Registration process without incident,
though I kind of felt she was feeling it was already more trouble
than it was
worth. When we got to the Volunteer Opportunity Registration Form
and I asked what
the duties of the volunteer would be, she replied, rather curtly, “Putting
the kettle on”. I decided I might be pushing my luck if I enquired whether
they had a Health and Safety policy in place to cover that.
I had intended to raise issues around collecting elderly people in a minibus: the possibility of criminal record checks and all that that involves, insurance, volunteer policies and expenses. But my organiser was developing a look of uneasy disbelief which kind of said. “Does it really need to be this complicated? You asked me to take on a volunteer and now you spring all this on me”.
What she actually said was “I was wanting to help but this is too much like work.” Which is similar to what I told my colleague when he returned from his holiday.
Where do you stand?
On the one hand:
“Involving volunteers means organisations receive benefits but must also face their responsibilities. They must have certain procedures in place before they can take on volunteers and if they do not have the capacity to do this properly then they shouldn’t take on volunteers. It’s all about protecting the client group. There are certain things that constitute good practice. You can’t decide that they apply to some organisations and not others just because they are run by volunteers rather than paid workers”
And on the other:
“You can’t expect someone who is volunteering in a small organisation to do all this extra paperwork. You have to be flexible. We can’t claim to want volunteering to be as accessible as possible and then insist on organisations having all these policies and procedures in place before volunteers are referred. They will never take on volunteers and everyone – the organisation, potential volunteers, clients - will lose out.”
Have you been in this situation? Do you sometimes feel it’s more effort than it’s worth to recruit volunteers? Is there a way of easing the burden on smaller organisations, making it easier for them to take on volunteers? Or should every organisation have the same standards in place?
nick.woodhead@volunteeredinburgh.org.uk
Introducing...
Our new Mentoring Development Worker Steven Piercy introduces himself.
After two years as an Officer in the Prison Service, my mind filled with the heady prospect of working for a smaller organisation hopefully in which my individual contribution would be more valued, I emptied out my locker and came to join the team here at the Volunteer Centre.
The first ‘proper job’ I had after leaving school was in the voluntary sector and I guess the memories and experiences I took from there led to my recent decision to return to it. For me, somehow, working in the public and private sectors never felt “quite right”.
I’d love to tell you about my altruistic intentions: about how I want to change the world and make everyone happy, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. While I do want my job to be ‘for the greater good’ rather than the benefit of a shareholder and I want what I’m doing to make a difference to people, my real reason for wanting to come back to the voluntary sector is simply that it is, in my experience, a nicer environment to work in. Workplace stress seems to be something I left in the locker-room with my epaulettes and key-chain, ‘The Management’ is now something that exists to offer support, guidance and leadership as opposed to challenges, arguments and obstacles.
Taking my rose-tinted specs off for just a moment, I will concede that problems do exist in the voluntary sector, and that people do find themselves unhappy: funding problems take away job security, fundraising goals replace sales targets, poor management does exist and sometimes I feel tied in knots by the need to be SO politically correct. I suppose the difference is that, because we have made - for the most part - an active decision to work where we work rather than ‘stumbling into things’, we tend not to gripe and moan so much. We’re not after huge salaries, and big bonuses would mean funding taken from elsewhere. We’re generally happy doing the jobs we do, and when problems arise, that old voluntary sector support network trundles into action.
It’s going to take a while to get to know everyone here: as well as a team of around fifty dedicated volunteer mentors (without whom there would be no service – so a nod of thanks to them!), we service nine Job Centre’s under the Mentoring Towards Employment contract – each containing a team of New Deal Personal Advisors, not to mention the other New Deal option providers and everyone involved in the day-to-day business of the volunteer centre!
A couple of months in, and I’m finding my feet – most of the people I need to meet with have been met, the day-to-day work is well under way, and I’ve even been involved in my first intake of new volunteer mentor training. While it doesn’t seem like five minutes since I first walked into the Volunteer Centre, in other ways feels like I’ve been here for an age – I guess that’s a by-product of working somewhere you enjoy.
“Sorry, I Don’t Do Charity”
Exploring issues for young people and volunteering
Recent research has shown that fewer under 25’s volunteer than in any other age range and that the number of those who do is falling. This is despite volunteering initiatives and programmes such as Millennium Volunteers, CSV and Princes Trust targeting this particular age group. A working group chaired by Lady Julia Ogilvy is currently developing yet another youth volunteering programme provisionally named Scotscorp. But do these projects have widespread appeal or is it just the well educated, well motivated young people who are taking advantage of the benefits of volunteering?
To try to answer this question and address other key issues, Volunteer
Centre Edinburgh commissioned Lynn Wotherspoon, Researcher & Trainer, to consult
local young people through a series of structured focus group sessions. The
research was funded by a small grant from Edinburgh Youth Social Inclusion
Partnership.
The focus groups were lively, informative and sparked some interesting
debate between the participants. Each group discussed perceptions of
volunteering and the barriers excluding young people from getting involved
as well as
suggesting ideas for overcoming negative images and other such stumbling
blocks.
So what do young people really think about volunteering? A full report
will be available on-line next month. For further information or to obtain
a paper
version of the report contact Linda McNeill at the Volunteer Centre.
linda.mcneill@volunteeredinburgh.org.uk
Volunteer Centre Services
The Admin Team
In addition to providing a whole range of essential services the Admin Team advertises your volunteering opportunities to the masses! The database is accessible to the public - both online, and in hard-copy by using the drop-in facility.
Resource Unit
Provides a range of services to promote good practice and support volunteer involving organisations throughout Edinburgh. The Resource Unit offer consultancy, networking, 1:1 support, advice and information. We can help you to identify, address and respond to wider policy issues as they affect volunteering. The Resource Unit is reponsible for the website, newsletter and email bulletins resource library, briefing papers and Edinburgh Voluntary Organisers’ Forum.
Events & Training Unit
Runs a programme of seminars and events for volunteer organisers, including Core Skills in Volunteering - a four day course that covers essential volunteer management, including policy, recruitment and selection, support and supervision, and training. Additional, in-depth seminars examine more specific issues.
Support & Advice Team
Offers support to referrers, and organisations that are looking to involve volunteers with extra support needs, and also to potential volunteers who may have higher support needs eg. recent mental health problems or disabilities.
Young People
Provides advice and information on routes into volunteering for the under 25’s as well as delivering the Millennium Volunteer programme in Edinburgh.
Employer Supported Volunteering
Volunteer Centre Edinburgh helps employers with employer supported volunteering and team building through volunteering.
New Deal Mentoring
Volunteer Centre Edinburgh recruits volunteers to act as Mentors for long term unemployed on New Deal. People joining New Deal - part of the Government's Welfare to Work strategy are given help by Volunteer Mentors to gain the qualities, and skills they need to get and keep jobs.
South Edinburgh
The full range of services - now from an office in Gilmerton.
Volunteers’ Week Celebrates 20 Years
This year Volunteers Week celebrates its 20th anniversary with the theme of 20:20 vision. Organisers of Volunteers Week are encouraging us to adapt our Volunteers’ Week events to fit this theme.
Case Studies Project
Volunteer Centre Edinburgh will be interviewing 20 volunteers and presenting their images and stories. It is hoped that this human interest resource will be useful in generating some media friendly articles. If you know someone whose life has been changed by volunteering, please get in touch. Contact Lara Celini at Volunteer Centre Edinburgh: lara.celini@volunteeredinburgh.org.uk
Certificate Ceremony
A perfect opportunity to say thank you to your volunteers and to recognise the contribution that they are making to their city.
You can nominate up to three volunteers for recognition at the ceremony, but book them in soon as there are inly 100 places in total, and they fill up quickly. This year the event will take place on Tuesday 1 June.
More info available soon.
The views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of Volunteer Centre Edinburgh.
Please send all contributions to mark.steven@volunteeredinburgh.org.uk.
