Support Provided and Activities from Volunteer Cornwall
Volunteer Cornwall offer a range of support services & activities across the whole county. You can find out more about how we help in the sections below.
Training
Volunteer Cornwall's training academy has extensive experience in deliverng quality courses and workshops for individuals and organisations across Cornwall. We offer a mixture of accredited and bespoke training courses to shape our content around the needs of the voluntary sector.
Volunteer Cornwall has been successfully delivering Volunteer Management qualifications since 2012 and we are an ILM approved training centre, delivering a suite of courses in Leadership & Management based around Managing Volunteers.
We are happy to offer a free consultation meeting to provide you with a no obligation training solution.
Transport
Volunteer Cornwalls transport team help to organise volunteer drivers who can get people around the county, with journeys ranging from getting to and from appointments to driving children to school. We have volunteer drivers right across the county to help you get around Cornwall, all of our drivers have continuous training and enhanced DBS checks.
Volunteer Cornwall’s transport team can always use more volunteers. Whether you are interested in driving members of the public on a daily basis, or becoming a trained up minibus driver and helping other charities and organisations we would love to hear from you. Within a short time of volunteering with us you will be making a real difference in peoples’ lives for the better and be able to see the impact that you are having on your community.
Social Prescribing
Volunteer Cornwall recently led a partnership bid to the Department of Health & Care for a Social Prescribing Scheme for Cornwall and we're pleased to say this was successful.
Social prescribing means different things to different people, however, the Social Prescribing Network’s co-produced definition is: ‘Enabling healthcare professionals to refer patients to a link worker, to co-design a nonclinical social prescription to improve their health and wellbeing.’
The focus of our Social Prescribing approach will be addressing social and lifestyle issues at an early stage and preventing ill health rather than managing complex conditions later.
The partnership consists of 6 voluntary sector organisations and each partner will employ a Link Worker who will work with groups of Practices to take referrals, carry out a person-centred assessment and identify a wide range of appropriate activities to which to refer the person.
HOPE Programme
HOPE is a programme to help local people build confidence to self-manage their long-term health conditions. This could include:
- Physical health such as pain relief.
- Mental ill health issues such as anxiety, stress and depression.
- People returning to work after a long absence.
- Parents/carers of children with additional or complex needs.
Volunteer Cornwall are coordinating the launch of HOPE in Cornwall, with our NHS colleagues. We are very excited to be rolling out this programme which has been so successful across the country.
The programme helps to focus on the person, not as a long-term condition. It helps people to discover new strengths and rediscover old ones to keep themselves well. It also aims to boost self-confidence and resilience, to help cope better emotionally, psychologically and practically with any condition.
Lifeline Volunteers
From time to time we are asked by the Health and Care Sector if we can help with issues that might impact on the number of hospital admissions that currently take place.
To that end, we are piloting a new scheme to help people stay independent in their own homes for longer. I am sure you have heard of the Lifeline system, where equipment is installed in homes and a Lifeline pendant or similar is issued so they can wear it and press it if they have a fall or become unwell. This obviously gives the wearer the reassurance and confidence to carry on living in their own homes.
Our offer of help is to find Volunteers who are happy to be the applicant’s contacts where they have no local family/friends who can be the point of contact for a Lifeline system. Looking at the figures the call out rate is quite low, and most calls are at night when the Lifeline Centre would handle the request.
Stroke Befriending
Volunteer Cornwall are running an exciting new befriending service to support adults living in Cornwall who have had a stroke.
The Stroke Befriending Service (commissioned by Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust) will match people who have had a stroke with trained befrienders who can offer support and encouragement.
Befrienders can visit people living with stroke at home, in a care home or in hospital (including specialist stroke units at Camborne Redruth Community Hospital, Bodmin Community Hospital and Mount Gould in Plymouth). The service is even available via email, phone or video call, meaning that people can speak to someone who understands, regardless of where they live in Cornwall.
We are looking for volunteers who have experience in health or social care or have personal experience of a stroke. You need to be friendly, patient and willing to share experiences as well as listen to their story. You can tell us when you are available and whether you would prefer to offer befriending to people in hospital, at home, in care homes, over the phone or online.