The Importance of Volunteers
The VCS Emergencies Partnership is made up of around 200 local and national organisations committed to a human-centred approach to emergency planning and response. For our partners in the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS), volunteers play a key role in allowing them to support their communities as best they can before, during and after an emergency. To hear more about this, we spoke to Community Action Network’s CEO, Karen Loftus, who told us about supporting communities across Dorset and the lifeline volunteers so often provide.
Having first worked in the voluntary sector many years ago, Karen returned to it in 2019 after roles with the local authority in children’s services and the NHS in primary and secondary care. As the CEO of a small/medium VCS organisation, Karen’s role encompasses a wide range of responsibilities, from HR and business planning, to meeting people in small charities doing amazing things in their communities. “For me, my role is about leading and inspiring my team and taking every opportunity to promote the voluntary sector at strategic meetings to make sure our sector is included and is valued as an equal partner,” she explained.
Community Action Network (CAN) works on many projects, focusing on a variety of topics and issues that affect people across Dorset. These projects include mental health support at wellbeing hubs, community support for those discharged from hospital, and work to help better understand health inequalities faced by those in poor mental health, who have learning disabilities or are from diverse communities. However, they have three key missions:
- Empowering the voluntary sector to survive and thrive, by providing expertise, support, development opportunities and training.
- Enabling volunteering through an online volunteering hub, helping everyone to play an active role in their community.
- Connecting communities by helping to create conditions where everyone’s voice is valued and heard by facilitating great local networking and communication.
Volunteers are vital in allowing CAN, and the whole VCS, to function and support those in need. This was demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic when the organisation recruited many volunteers. “We started supporting the council with volunteering to deliver medicine and food; we recruited 1000 people in a weekend! We also supported the vaccination programme where people could not get over how wonderful the volunteers were and how smooth the management of them was,” Karen said. “I was at an Integrated Care Board meeting, and they were all saying they could not have delivered the vaccination programme without volunteers. We could not have made sure that people weren’t dying of hunger or dying without medication, without communities stepping up and helping.”
However, volunteering during the pandemic had benefits for not just those who were receiving the support, but also those giving it. “We’ve got a fabulous retiree gang (of volunteers) because they still want to have a purpose. I had one person at the vaccination centre say to me, ‘You saved my life!’ He then explained how he wasn’t going out and felt worthless, but now we had given him a purpose. Having someone tell me that was quite a moment and I’ll never forget that. I tell them all they are saving lives too, the vaccination gang, they are supporting their community, helping the NHS, and saving lives,” Karen added.
Although she has noticed a newfound respect for volunteers from others, Karen believes there is still confusion for many as to the difference between the voluntary sector and volunteers. “I’m not a volunteer, I work in the voluntary sector for a charity, and I have a board of volunteer trustees who are amazing. We assume that people know, but a lot of people do not know how voluntary sector organisations work, they just assume we are all volunteers, but volunteers are different to the voluntary sector.”
As she has mentioned, Karen always makes a point to tell her volunteers just how important they are to their communities with her always ensuring they are treated correctly, with this something she is particularly passionate about.
“Volunteers should always enhance what you do, you should not see volunteers as a money saving prospect. You can’t replace staff with volunteers in big organisations, but in small community organisations, particularly in rural areas, they are the lifeblood. They should be treated respectfully, but also not put on a pedestal because most do not want that. You have to treat people properly and pay their expenses, if you volunteer, you should not be out-of-pocket, otherwise you are putting barriers up for people who then cannot afford to volunteer,” she said.
Being the CEO of Community Action Network means that Karen visits some incredibly inspiring community organisations, and this is one of the parts of her role that brings her an immense amount of joy. “I was over in Portland, which is an isle off Dorset recently where there is a small charity called Island Community Action. I met with two older volunteers who spend their time driving people who live on Portland to hospital appointments across Dorset that would be almost impossible to reach by public transport. They don’t have to do that, but they are an absolute lifeline, and it really reaffirms that there are some great people out there,” Karen explained, adding, “Most people who volunteer or run community organisations are very humble and spend all their energy doing great work and I think, as the voluntary sector, we are not great at saying what we do and how great we are because we are so busy doing it.”
You can find out more about Community Action Network’s work here.
You can find out more about the work of the Voluntary and Community Sector Emergencies Partnership (VCSEP) here.
