Whatever your age, you CAN make a difference
AFTER more than 15,000 readers rallied to the Daily Mail’s call for hospital volunteers, we talk to two people who have been giving up their time – and hear how it has given them so much back in return.
YOU GET BACK SO MUCH FROM HELPING OTHERS
Joe Callery, 49, is a former fish fryer from Johnstone, Renfrewshire. He began volunteering for a stop-smoking support group run by the NHS after successfully quitting himself. ‘I volunteered for Renfrewshire Community Health Partnership smoking cessation services for years. I was a 50-a-day smoker but decided to quit on my 40th birthday because I could hardly breathe and could not walk or take exercise.
I joined the local NHS smoking cessation group after seeing a notice about it, and the people in the group really helped each other. I was surprised at how easy it was to stop. It actually becomes quite competitive and you don’t want to smoke because that would be letting the group down.
After seven weeks the group was over but I was not ready to give up coming along. That’s why I began volunteering, because I had nothing else to keep me motivated and I realised volunteering would give me that focus and enable me to pass my experience on to other people.
It was great because I was given training and qualified as a stop smoking adviser. They were trying out a buddy system for people who had stopped smoking, to give them extra support.
I then started going to smoking cessation groups telling people about my experiences, what I did to keep me from smoking again and giving people tips on how to stop. It’s really about changing the habit for a more healthy habit, and replacing the smoking with something else, such as sucking lozenges or mints which are not harmful.
I progressed to running a support group for people who had stopped, but who needed extra support to stay stopped. I ran this at the same time as the stop smoking group and that meant that both sets of people would pass in the same corridor, which for the people stopping would give them a target to get to and for the ones that had stopped, gave them a memory of where they used to be.
I have also been involved in many media campaigns with newspapers and radio. I have also sat at the table with medical professionals and given them my own input. I would never have imagined myself sitting down with doctors and giving them my thoughts like that. None of this would have been achieved if I had not taken that decision to become a volunteer, so it has really given me a lot back as well.
The feeling you get from helping one person remain stopped from smoking, for one extra week, is hard to put into words. You get back so much. Volunteering means you are there because you want to be.
It has been almost ten years since I stopped smoking and I don’t think about it much any more. I still meet up with my friends from my own smoking cessation group and we talk about how we used to all smoke but would not do it any more. I stopped volunteering a couple of years ago but I would really recommend volunteering to anyone who is considering it. You just never know what opportunities it will give you.’
REPORTING FOR DUTY FEELS GREAT
Eliza Palmer, 17, an A-level student from Tooting, south-west London, has volunteered at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital once a week for the past year. She works on the ‘bleep desk’, helping out across the hospital. ‘Monday afternoons are free on my timetable, but while my friends all go to lunch, I catch a bus to the hospital. I love reporting for duty – volunteering makes me feel great.
I’m not treated like a 17-yearold girl, but a member of a team who plays a vital role in keeping the NHS running. I signed up a year ago, after seeing 24 Hours in A&E and wanting to know more about how a hospital works.
Volunteers on the bleep desk are called to help out in situations across the hospital, such as wheeling patients from the ward for scans or collecting medicines. Recently I ran the whole way to A&E because there was an elderly man who needed fresh air but was unable to walk unaided. The staff weren’t free to help him, so they paged the volunteers’ desk.
When I took him outside we began talking. It turned out he was an artist – he was lonely, and had been in and out of hospital over the past year. After 20 minutes, the patient felt well enough to return to A&E.
By now he looked so much more relaxed. I love volunteering so much I’m taking a gap year so I can have training to help patients with dementia, before applying to medical school. Many of my friends want to sign up because they’ve seen how much I get out of it too.’
There is no maximum age on volunteering. The minimum age is 16 although not all NHS organisations are able to take volunteers until 18 due to their own policies.