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Rotherham Volunteer Centre Newsletter
Edition 3 2014 – 15th September 2014
For the latest volunteering news, support and
information:
News
Free Event for Volunteers and Sport Clubs/Organisations
Volunteering in Sport across Rotherham – Thursday 23rd October 2014 5:30-8pm @
Voluntary Action Rotherham, The Spectrum, Coke Hill, Rotherham, S60 2HX
South Yorkshire Sport and Voluntary Action Rotherham are joining forces to support
sports clubs and organisations across Rotherham to inspire and engage further
volunteering in sport in the borough. The event aims to provide a platform for
increasing the impact of volunteering in sport across Rotherham. Whether you are an
experienced coach or umpire, an IT whizz, a safeguarding expert or just someone with a
bit of time on your hands, there are lots of clubs out there who would welcome your
help. With this in mind we would like to bring together individuals with an interest in
volunteering and the clubs and organisations who need volunteers with the hope that
new networks might be forged and volunteers brokered.
At the event, Volunteers and Clubs will be separated initially and supported on the one
hand to explore; the benefits of volunteering, how to find the right volunteer
opportunity to best meet your needs and what to expect from a good volunteering
experience. Clubs and organisations will also be brought together to explore; how you
might build on your existing volunteer programme, how to engage new volunteers, the
links between volunteer management good practice & Clubmark and support to move
forward.
We will then bring everyone back together so that clubs can promote themselves and
their volunteer opportunities and volunteers can consider their options and hopefully
express an interest in volunteering for a club. It may seem quite scary but we would also
encourage clubs to share volunteers where possible, so please encourage existing
volunteers who have some extra capacity to attend, in the hope that they may be able
to offer another club some of their time and experience.
Sport has the power to reach individuals and bind communities together in ways other
activities so often fail, but all the planning, time and passion which makes this possible
so often rests on a few shoulders. Sustaining sporting activity relies on a dedicated army
of volunteers behind the scenes organising match fixtures, maintaining facilities, sitting
on committees, training up the next generation of eager sportsmen and women and so
much more.
Refreshments and networking will be from 5:30pm, and the programme will start at
6pm prompt.
To secure your free place and in order to find out more about your needs, please
complete the short booking form using this link
www.surveymonkey.com/s/RotherhamSportsVolunteering
For further information please contact Simon Pugh, Development Manager at South
Yorkshire Sport on 0114 223 5677 or simon.pugh@sysport.co.uk or Alison Thorp,
Community Group Volunteering Officer at VAR on 01709 834462 or
alison.thorp@varotherham.org.uk
August DBS News
The August edition of DBS Disclosure News is available for you to read on their
website. This month's edition includes:
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new form replenishment exercise underway
volunteers: who is eligible?
updated guidance - eligibility and workforce
your opinions make a difference
eligibility - you said, we did
Brokerage
Difficult Conversations….
It is our hope that volunteers who we broker through to
organisations will have a successful placement and that
the partnership will work out. We recognise, however,
that this isn’t always the case and sometimes, for a range
of reasons, the volunteer relationship doesn’t work out,
or the volunteer isn’t suitable. This will happen
occasionally, but volunteers will need to know and
sometimes, they might ask for feedback, just like you
would expect if you were unsuccessful with an interview for a paid post. Increasingly
though, staff at Rotherham Volunteer Centre are being asked to provide feedback to
volunteers who have been unsuccessful in their placement. This feedback needs to
come from the person who interviewed the volunteer, or received their application. You
can do this verbally, or in writing, but either way it is important to let the volunteer
know if you will be progressing their application.
If you are worried about providing this type of feedback, you can contact us and we can
provide some tips or suggestions about how you could undertake this process.
We cannot, however, provide feedback to individuals who we have brokered to you.
Our role as a broker is introduce volunteers to volunteer placements, then we rely on
organisations to take volunteers through their recruitment process. We do provide
follow ups now with as many volunteers as we can, to see if they are still volunteering
and if there are ways in which we can improve our service. We do similar follow ups
with organisations and always welcome suggestions on how we can improve and
identify where thing’s might be going wrong. For more information, please contact us.
Good Practice Development
Volunteer Coordinator Forum Update
If you weren’t already aware RVC coordinates and facilitates a bi-monthly forum which
brings together volunteer managers whether in a paid or unpaid capacity to network,
share good practice and generally trouble shoot. July’s meeting was well attended
despite being in the school holidays and saw more new faces from Active Rotherham,
Action Housing and Royal Voluntary Service – welcome Chris, Scott and Nicki! A huge
thank you too to Jayne and her team at Swinton Lock for hosting the meeting and for
looking after us so well.
The next meeting is scheduled for Thursday 25th September between 9am and 11am
and is generously being hosted by the Rotherham Hospice. This month’s hot topic will
be accessing training and support for those organisations and groups who work closely
with children and young people. We will be joined by guest speaker Kirsty Booth from
RMBC’s Safeguarding Unit. We will also consider the ‘professional development
requests’ and ‘offers’ put forward by members at the July meeting, in the hope of
making some matches.
Please note I have updated the forum page on the VAR website to include Minutes and
Agendas should you need them http://www.varotherham.org.uk/volunteerscoordinator-forum/. I’ve also added various downloads including relevant forms and
guidance http://www.varotherham.org.uk/files-category/vc-documents/.
For more details or to confirm your attendance please contact Alison Thorp: Tel: 01709
834462 or email alison.thorp@varotherham.org.uk. Membership of this group is free.
Spotlight on Volunteers and the Law
The legal status of volunteers is one huge grey area to the frustration of volunteer
managers. The result is that volunteers are vulnerable to discrimination and
organisations feel vulnerable to legal action. The critical issue is the inference of a
‘contract’ between the organisation and its volunteers. If a contractual relationship is
implied then a volunteer is likely to be seen as a worker in the eyes of the law and the
consequences for the organisation are significant.
Whilst we might conclude that volunteers are not employees therefore the law does not
offer the same protection, this situation isn’t static and is very much a debate in
progress particularly in view of the increasing number of test cases which are
challenging how volunteers are perceived and in turn treated. There are a number of
well documented test cases which illustrate circumstances where the policies and
procedures developed by an organisation suggest an employment relationship and
therefore employment law becomes relevant. An employment relationship or contract
of employment is inferred if two key things are determined:
(i) consideration; that is the organisation and the individual exchange something of
material value (even if the value is small)
(ii) intention; that is the organisation and the individual intend to enter into a legally
binding contract
Chaudri V Migrant Advisory Service 1997 is one such test case when ‘consideration’ was
determined because Chaudri received £25 per week to cover expenses even though she
walked to and from the organisation where she volunteered and had lunch at home!
The tribunal concluded that Chaudri was working under a contract of employment
having effectively received a wage and she received an out of court settlement of
£11,000!
Given that the prospect of legal action rests on the perceived relationship between the
organisation and the individual ‘Volunteer involving organisations should be proactive in
ensuring that the policies and procedures which define their relationships with volunteers
are consistent with the voluntary, informal nature of volunteering’ Volunteer Now
website Accessed 31.7.2014.
For example, a good Volunteer Agreement should support this underpinning principle of
volunteering, highlighting mutual expectations rather than requirements and intentions
rather than obligations. Signatures are not necessary and a short statement should
make it clear that it is not a contract; is binding in honour only and not intended to be
legally binding. This and other documents which support your volunteer programme
should follow the same tone with language which is consistent with the informal nature
of volunteering, so ‘Role Description’ rather than ‘Job Description’, ‘reimbursement’
rather than ‘payment’, ‘arrangements’ rather than ‘disciplinary proceedings’. Guidance
should be meaningful and relevant, not reams and reams of detailed terms and
conditions more consistent with an employment relationship. Essentially, ‘structures
and documentation are needed but they should maximise participation rather than stifle
it’ (Rotherham Volunteer Strategy).
Alison Thorp 9th September 2014
Developing Volunteering Opportunities
Volunteer recruitment going a bit slow?
Contact the Volunteer Centre to find out ways in which you can
increase your volunteer team and find out more about volunteer
spotlights, which can raise your organisations’ profile. It might also be
worth reviewing your volunteer advert on the do-it website and
refreshing it a bit to make it look more appealing. Please contact Kerry
McGrath (Kerry.mcgrath@varotherham.org.uk) or Alison Thorp
(Alison.thorp@varotherham.org.uk) for more information.
Gardening’s a DREAM
On Tuesday the 19th of August a group of DREAM volunteers visited The Beeches Care
Home in Wath to help tidy up the garden to make it a pleasant place for residents to sit
and enjoy. The DREAM project uses volunteering opportunities to help improve skills
and wellbeing in adults with learning disabilities. The group worked extremely hard
transforming this space and even had a little help from the residents in potting plants
and painting garden furniture.
One member of staff at the care home had this to say…….
’’the residents really enjoyed their time helping, and when seeing the smiles on their
faces when they had a walk round after you left, makes all the hard work put in,
worthwhile....you really made their day!’’
If you would like more information on the DREAM project or how your organisation
might be able to benefit from DREAM volunteers then please follow this link
http://www.varotherham.org.uk/dream/ or contact Richard on
richard.ripley@varotherham.org.uk.
To see more pictures from the day please follow us on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/DREAM-Rotherham/519018651560628
Policy, Response and Campaigning
Rights of volunteers as against employees
Workplace Law has a new 3 page resource on legal status differences between
volunteers and employees, highlighting key considerations for organisations to bear in
mind when recruiting volunteers. Via Workplace Law page or direct link to pdf, 254KB
http://www.workplacelaw.net/personalStatusArea/download/id/2331.
Volunteering definitions and back to work programmes
A couple of recent discussion articles around volunteering:
-- NVCO's volunteering director looks at issues around volunteering and back to work
programmes, with ideas for what needs to change.
-- Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the RSA, reckons that "the way we think about
(volunteering) as a system tends to be rather ad hoc and under-conceptualised", and
looks at the definition of volunteering in 'A formula for volunteering?'.
Latest Community Life Survey statistics on volunteering
On 22 July the Community Life Survey released its latest statistics on volunteering. Nick
Ockenden, Head of the Institute of Volunteering Research suggests in his blog that we
shouldn’t be worried about the decline in rates of volunteering that the statistics show.
Strategic Development of Volunteering
Community
Volunteer
Ambassador
Project Update
The Community Volunteer
Ambassador team continue to raise the profile of
volunteering in the borough and to strengthen our
links with local communities. On the back of Ted
Ring’s article in the Whiston Villager June 2014, July saw the publication of a ‘Volunteer
Spotlight’ in the Rotherham Advertiser which the whole team contributed to and which
inspired the 7th member of the team and our first lady CVA Julie Pearson to join us!
Furthermore, September has got off to a great start with the publication of a
volunteering article in the Sept/Oct edition of the popular ‘Around Town’ magazine
which David Selman contributed to.
David, Ted and Michael Pearson also ensured that the Volunteer Centre/VAR was
represented at a recent Safe at Last event and both David and Ted were involved last
week in College Careers Days and an event at Lifewise.
It’s not too late to get involved so if you are passionate about volunteering and would
like to support us to sell the benefits of volunteering to others as part of your existing
role in an organisation or group we would love to hear from you. Alternatively, if you
would like to recommend an individual as a possible Ambassador please get in touch by
ringing Alison Thorp on 01709 834462 or emailing alison.thorp@varotherham.org.uk
Attracting older volunteers in an ageing society
The Commission on Voluntary Sector and Ageing has issued a new discussion paper on
the future of volunteering in an ageing society. The Guardian has an article from the
chief executive of New Philanthropy Capital, at http://www.theguardian.com/voluntarysector-network/2014/aug/15/can-charities-keep-attracting-ageing-population.
Training volunteers working with older people
Training packs, contributions to training session expenses and consultancy support are
on offer from Age UK for organisations who wish to train their volunteers working with
older people, promoting physical activity and wellbeing.
Best of the Web
Yorkshire Building Society Lasting Legacy Funding
To mark their 150th Anniversary, Yorkshire Building Society are inviting charities to
apply for a share of £150,000 to help them continue to assist the community in one of
the following areas: children, elderly, disabilities or general public. They are looking to
provide 15 charities with a donation of £10,000 each to fund a specific project that will
make a tangible and lasting difference to their community.
tt-exchange
Formerly known as CTXchange, this programme enables eligible UK-based charities to
request donated technology products (including operating system software, server
software and hardware products such as switches, routers, wireless equipment and
firewalls) from Partners such as Microsoft, Symantec and Cisco. Charities are required to
pay an administrative fee per product to cover the costs of delivering the programme.
Whilst the administrative fees vary, charities will still make savings of between 92-96%
on typical retail prices.
Help NCVO develop understanding of how the voluntary sector is affected by
severe weather
Complete our survey for frontline organisations.
Your participation in this survey will help NCVO understand how much the sector is
already affected by severe weather, demonstrate the important role the sector already
plays in emergency responses, and what support would help the sector continue to play
these important roles in the future.
Services
Does your organisation carry out DBS (previously CRB) checks?
VAR is a registered body authorised to undertake DBS checks on behalf of all organisations. This
means that we have undertaken the relevant training to be able to process applications efficiently
and professionally. All information is handled in a sensitive and confidential manner. We offer
training to organisations to ensure forms are filled in correctly before they are sent to us which
ensures a speedy service for all involved.
Extremely competitive price
Our DBS checks include a small administration fee which is dependent on the type of check required
or the organisation asking for it. There are no hidden or extra charges for returned or reissued
forms.
Speedy and efficient service
We don’t wait to send them out in bulk, and applications can be processed the same day if they are
correctly filled in. Current turnaround time can be as little as 2 weeks.* (*Dependent on the DBS)
Simple, hassle-free sign up process
No commitment upon sign up, or minimum/maximum applications to meet. Full guidance provided
every step of the way, including on eligible positions.
Please contact Allison Carr (allison.carr@varotherham.org.uk) or 01709 834460 for an information
pack.
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