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Government's £6m response to volunteering Commission

Finance | Vibeka Mair | 11 Mar 2008

Training programmes for volunteers and a fund to get disabled people into volunteering have landed a £6m injection as part of the government’s response to the report by the Commission on the Future of Volunteering.

In January, the Commission published its Manifesto for Change, making a series of wide-reaching recommendations on how to develop the volunteering sector in England.

In response, minister for the third sector, Phil Hope, announced the government would invest £4m in new training programmes for volunteers and volunteer managers. It will also give £2m to create a new access-to-volunteering fund for disabled people.

However, Volunteering England chief executive Justin Davis Smith criticised the government for “ignoring the Commission’s call for a £5m matched fund for the strategic development and modernisation of volunteering infrastructure”.

The Office of the Third Sector (OTS) said existing programmes already invested in local volunteering infrastructure, so the recommendation would not be acted on.

Other rejected recommendations included the creation of a cabinet minister-level post for volunteering. The OTS said volunteering was already given powerful representation within government.

However, the government said it would study whether a recommendation to include volunteers as part of the inspection of public services was viable. In addition, it will support existing events to promote volunteering, improve the co-ordination of volunteering by civil servants and produce guidance to help avoid unnecessary criminal records checks being carried out.

This week the Commission’s chairwoman, Baroness Neuberger (pictured), repeated the criticism of unnecessary criminal record checks in her new report, Volunteering in the Public Services: Health and Social Care.

The report, the first in a series examining the role of volunteers in public services, said it was unnecessary for organisations to require mandatory criminal record checks for all their volunteers.

Neuberger said: “Checks should only be undertaken where a volunteer might spend time alone with young people or vulnerable adults. Managers need to show some common sense and stop, for example, requiring CRB checks for people working on hospital radio stations, one of many examples we received of where a CRB check was clearly unnecessary.”

Neuberger also identified the potential of service users as volunteers and said volunteers who were going through similar experiences would be best able to offer emotional and practical support on living with the condition.

Other recommendations in the report included the creation of employee volunteering schemes within health and social care services, the use of NHS websites to signpost volunteering opportunities and the creation of in-house volunteering hubs in health and social care services.  

The findings from the reports will feed into a final report on volunteering in public services to be given to the prime minister at the end of the year. It is understood that Neuberger’s next report will focus on criminal justice. 

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