Help is on its way!
Mail’s first NHS hospital volunteers are shown the ropes
CLUTCHING their application forms, these are the founding members of our Hospital Helpforce.
They are the first intake of the 33,000 Daily Mail readers who pledged to give their precious time to their local NHS.
The group of nine volunteers went along to the University Hospital of North Tees to discuss possible roles, meet current volunteers and start the full application process.
The hospital in Stockton-on-Tees is part of one of the handful of trusts that have established volunteer programmes, enabling it to start the placement process more quickly than expected. While the vast majority of pledgers have just received their welcome letters and pin badges, these are the first to be matched with their local NHS trust and start the application process.
Speaking at their introductory meeting, Roz Tinlin of Helpforce, the charity that we ran our campaign with, said the commitment by readers would transform lives.
‘We all know that volunteering has a massive impact on the hospital,’ she said.
‘You have an impact on patients, you have an impact on staff because you’re helping release their time for more clinical high needs stuff, you’re having an impact on your own life – quite often you’re getting new skills.
‘If you’re just sitting holding a patient’s hand and talking to them for ten minutes or you’re getting them a newspaper or greeting people and taking them to a ward… there’s so many things that you can do that will really help.
‘Or it might just be that you just want to give something back because you appreciate what the NHS does for you. What you’re doing is so special, you should never underestimate that.’
The Mail’s Hospital Helpforce campaign, which ran in December, is set to boost the number of volunteers to the NHS by a third, with a staggering 1.8million hours pledged. Some 33,064 people promised to give their time. The first meeting was held as work continues behind the scenes to match the thousands of pledgers who signed up to volunteer with their local NHS trusts and charities in the coming months.
North Tees hospital currently has around 300 helpers in a variety of roles including befriending patients, taking them to appointments, and operating a library service and radio station. Julie Hunter, 56, a retired sales manager from Stockton- on-Tees, signed up to help after reading about the campaign in the Mail.
‘I really wanted to give something back,’ she said. ‘It’s my local hospital and something I’d always been interested in doing but I didn’t know how and never had the time before. This is such a good idea.’
North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust is hoping to use some of its new volunteers to start a ‘home from hospital service’ pilot project to help stop patients becoming stuck in hospital.
Delayed discharges are a major cause of bed-blocking – where someone is medically fit to leave hospital but has to stay because they do have the right support at home. On the day of discharge, patients who do not have family will be driven home by a ‘buddy’.
Buddies will carry out ‘neighbourly’ checks such as making sure their heating still works and that they have basic supplies of food and drink as well as essential medication. They will stay in contact with the patient for 28 days and will take them to any follow-up appointments.
Barbara Bright, chief of staff at North Tees trust, said it has been overwhelmed by the response from readers. ‘The campaign has already produced a wonderful flurry of applications from such a diverse group of volunteers,’ she added.