Heartbeat: New volunteer role launched at the Trust

May 29, 2020

With the outbreak of coronavirus across the world, our volunteer service has seized this opportunity to offer a helping hand.

Our hospital sites may have gone into lockdown in recent weeks, but that hasn’t stopped us in wanting to be caring and kind and more importantly, ensure our patients are still our number one priority.

With visiting restricted due to the outbreak of COVID-19, our volunteer service decided they wanted to turn this negative into a positive by launching a new role for the service – a 2020 response volunteer.

“The role of a 2020 response volunteer is to assist the organisation during the coronavirus pandemic,” said Patricia Hunt, Volunteer Service Manager.

“All our response volunteers will be flexible and able to take on a variety of duties from distributing information leaflets, posters to helping us with the many donations from the community and wayfinding. The role is designed to help support our frontline colleague whilst they care for our patients.”

Kamal (Kay) Deep has taken up this new volunteer opportunity and is thriving in her new role. She told us: “It always feels good to be able to give back to people in my local area and help others, especially during such difficult times. If by me wayfinding or carrying out any of my other duties helps our patients and key workers, then it is a job I am proud to be doing.”

Liza Gill, Volunteer Service Manager believes the response volunteers will make a significant difference across all our sites. She said: “Our response volunteers encapsulate our strapline of ‘giving time to care’ and will most definitely have a positive impact across the whole Trust.

“Since the national call out from the NHS encouraging volunteers to help the most vulnerable, we have had a massive influx of potential volunteers wanting to offer their time to help us.”