Regional Volunteer Fund

About the work

SCVS were part of a consortium involving Neath Port Talbot CVS, Neath Port Talbot Council, Swansea Council, Swansea Bay Health Board and West Glamorgan Regional Partnership. The initial funding they received aimed to develop a series of volunteering guides that would help showcase and develop volunteering across South West Wales following Covid-19. The funding also helped develop a set of training materials and allowed research on key topics including the possibility of a Volunteer Passport to be explored.

The under-spend was then used to second two senior members of SCVS and Neath Port Talbot SVS into the Regional Partnership to develop a volunteer strategy.

What we did

The project team wanted to put Theory of Change at the heart of their work. This meant we undertook a planning workshop to understand what could be achieved during a short time frame. We then undertook an action research evaluation. We supported the groups as they developed their guides, toolkits and training and facilitated sessions when needed to help the project develop.

During the second phase of work we acted as a critical friend. This included running regular reflective sessions to capture the practicalities of introducing a volunteer strategy into South West Wales.

To assist with developing a regional strategy we operationalised the framework for volunteering in health and social care. We then used this as a template for workshops with each of the key partners to help them understand where they currently are around volunteering and where they would like to get to.

The difference we made

The main outcome of this work was the toolkit we developed to Operationalise the Framework for Health and Social Care in Wales. The Framework was turned into a series of best practice statements. These were then used as a basis of a workshop with key partners to understand where they are now and where they wanted to get to. This insight could then be used to develop a regional strategy for volunteering that recognised the different positions each partner is at.