Volunteers’ Week Celebration Event
About the day
Wednesday 5th June was the chosen day where all the Healthwatch Hertfordshire team and a number of volunteers met at the Focolare Centre in Welwyn Garden City.
We had a couple of presentations, firstly from Geoff Brown, our CEO, to say thank you to all of our fabulous volunteers for their contributions during the year.
To give a flavour of what was shared, here are the main statistics and volunteer contributions from the year:
- Attended 33 Boards and Committees at a decision-making level.
- Assisted with the delivery of a number of ongoing and complete projects to promote the patient voice. To name but a few:
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- Hertswise Mystery Shopping
- Access to Dental Services
- NHS Long Term Plan Public Engagement
- Contributed experiences of health and social care services to our intelligence for feedback.
- Particularly focusing on volunteer-led engagement activities, and how this helped to increase public awareness of Healthwatch Hertfordshire:
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- Gave out 877 Info cards
- Recorded 134 service user experiences
- Enabled us to help 19 people with serious issues (who we wouldn’t have spoken to otherwise) they were facing with health and social care services through signposting
- Engaged with 922 members of the public
The above is just some of the value added by our volunteers.
Highlights of the event
As well as this, we had a presentation from Alice Lovell, Volunteer Co-ordinator, to refresh everyone on where the organisation is now, and the new volunteering roles that exist. Alice talked through the various ways in which the organisation works with health and social care services to improve patient experiences, in addition to the current volunteering roles. The Volunteer Handbook, with no end of useful documents was brought into the spotlight – and so was the website as a great source of information.
We also introduced our Equality & Diversity training courses for volunteers, coming up later in the year. All volunteers are encouraged and expected to attend this training as it forms part of core training, which we feel is essential in order to volunteer with us.
Next, we had a bit of fun with Health and Social Care Taboo, a faceoff between the two teams of Yorkshire and Lancashire, playing to see who could describe words the fastest. This turned out to be a reversal of the War of the Roses, with Lancashire winning out over Yorkshire by just one point!
Thank you volunteers
After a quick break for teas and coffees, it was onto the certificate presentation for everyone in attendance. Steve Palmer, our Chair, gave these out to thank everyone for their valuable contributions to the organisation.
Once this was done, all that was left to do was eat cake and have a chat, which went down very well!
Thank you to everyone who came along, and even if you didn’t make it, we’re still so grateful for all you do for the organisation.
