Volunteers
By Gursharan Kaur, Volunteer Services Manager, Volunteer Services
What was your experience of the pandemic?
I started my role part way through the pandemic and I’m so proud of how hard the Volunteer Services Team have been working. When the first lockdown started all our volunteers were asked to put their volunteering on hold whilst the Trust reviewed how we could safely have volunteers on site. This resulted in the team putting together new role descriptions together and delivering a lot of their usual face to face work virtually. We are so in awe of our amazing group of volunteers from our usual 400+ we only had 65-70 but that small group have donated over 7,000 volunteer hours to us during the pandemic
What was the hardest part?
Not being able to meet in person as much – Zoom calls can only go so far!
It has also been tricky managing volunteer expectations; we have spent a lot of time reassuring and support those volunteers who want to be on wards to engage with children and families. We know from conversations we’ve had with our volunteers this is something they’ve really missed out on – our staff and patients do too.
How did you cope?
Keeping in regular contact with each other by setting up daily team check-ins this helped us to connect as a team.
Keeping in contact with our volunteers and updating them on changes.
Developing new roles in new services.
Encouraging our volunteers to consider these new roles.
What did you learn?
It sounds a bit cliché but thinking outside the box. We had to learn to adapt to a new normal and consider more creative ways of engaging with volunteers and keeping them interested.
How do you think it changed the team?
We realised how resilient and adaptable to change we are. Not many positives have come from COVID but for our team it has meant we could really strip things back and start afresh. We have been able to develop detailed and bespoke training as well as ensuring volunteer roles matched the need for services that require them. We also feel that volunteers have been noticed a lot more during the pandemic because their roles have been a lot more visible and have gained lots of praise from senior staff
Beyond your team, who has inspired you during the pandemic?
PALS – they would have had to deal with a lot of parents and family members displaying a range of different emotions because appointments or operations had been cancelled or delayed. The PALS team would always go above and beyond to support patients and families in difficult circumstances and do their best to reassure and put them at ease.
Celebrating BWC Spirit
We are highlighting the amazing things our colleagues have done and achieved during the pandemic.
Our teams have bravely stood by the side of our patients, changed how they have worked to keep key and emergency services running and gone beyond the Trust to help colleagues in other parts of the NHS.
They have done so with an approach and spirit that is uniquely BWC and we want to celebrate that and what has been achieved.
From frontline clinical colleagues to our unseen and often unsung heroes in labs, offices and in our corridors - everyone has had a part to play and we’re sharing some of their stories over the next two weeks.
If you would like to thank individuals or teams either by sharing some kind words, pictures or a short video we would love to see them. You can submit your messages, pictures or videos by emailing bwc.communications@nhs.net