Giving back and mucking in – expert vollies benefit everyone

Helping hands: VCH volunteers muck in with some gardening

One of the interesting things that happened after the financial crash of 2008 was that the apparently fusty notion of ‘public service’ saw a bit of a revival.

The popularity of academic courses in banking dropped a little, while graduate programmes to fast-track students into teaching, social work and social enterprise blossomed with a new vigour.

“I think people want to get involved in their community, they want to feel connected, but they just don’t know how to,” muses Lauren Tobias, chief executive of Volunteer Centre Hackney (VCH), which has helped people into volunteer placements since 1997.

Volunteer Centre Hackney is how. It’s the Hackney hub for what used to be called ‘volunteer brokerage’ – people come in wanting to volunteer and VCH connects them to other people who need their services.

Their database is overflowing with opportunities, with calls to get involved in gardening, cookery, working with old people, working with animals, children, or all of these at once.

Tobias says that volunteering now has a role palliating some of the adverse effects of gentrification, providing an opportunity for integrating different groups within Hackney, increasingly divided by disparities in wealth.

“Volunteering can be one of those ways, giving something back to someone who’s living down the road who’s been there for generations.

“They could go and become a befriender, or help them grow tomatoes in their window box – there are lots of opportunities, which aren’t what people think of as traditional volunteering.”

‘Befriending’ means finding a few half-hours a month to chat with someone, who might be in hospital or socially isolated.

“It’s one of the small differences to life that Britain’s estimated 15 million volunteers make – in health, education, the environment, social welfare and other sectors across the country.

Motives for coming to Volunteer Centre Hackney  are various, but a big area is helping people get into work.

“Volunteering’s so good at giving people a routine and structure. And I think if you’re able to build up the resilience, confidence and skills to be able to maintain a volunteer placement you’re on your way to maintaining a job,” explains Tobias.

“You meet people, you start to feel needed, you feel that you’ve got skills that you haven’t used for a long time; you get better communication skills.

“There’s a whole range of benefits. We find that people say that it improves their confidence and wellbeing.”

Tobias continues to encounter the less positive aftershocks from the 2008 crash and the austerity that followed in her organisation’s day-to-day operations.

“We’ve definitely seen more unemployed people coming, and in the last year we’ve definitely seen more people coming with learning disabilities and the number of people with mental health issues has certainly increased,” she says when invited to consider the effect of the recession on her work.

Responding to this changing climate is one way Tobias has identified for VCH to take things further. She wants volunteering to play a much more serious role in the welfare system.

One big problem Volunteer Centre Hackney has experienced is that its volunteers have been pulled off their placements to take part in compulsory assignments under the government’s various welfare-to-work schemes, under threat of losing their benefits.

Activities that prepare volunteers for work can be curtailed in favour of work-related activity and employability courses.

“We do have a good relationship with Jobcentre Plus, and we work closely with a lot of the advisers. But there are opportunities for closer working,” says Tobias.

“Sometimes we’ve found that when someone’s been forced to go on a compulsory work placement, we’ve been able to convince their advisor that the volunteer placement they’re on already is going to be much better for them considering their long-term goals.

“We could also create and tailor volunteer roles that would give people specific experience and skills and if they were concerned, we could prove to advisors what they’re actually doing while volunteering.”

More information at Volunteer Centre Hackney.