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Volunteering Safely


Even if you’ve adapted to operating during a global pandemic, or if it is now somewhat normal for your project, group or organisation, the situation and conditions of involving volunteers remain in a state of frequent change and development. In this section we pull together information, advice, resources and guidance that will be useful in establishing a safe, secure and supportive environment for new or existing volunteering programmes. We can do lots of our previous work and also rise to new challenges safely, it just requires a little planning and team work.

It is also important that fears around Covid-19 don’t undo good work to make volunteering inclusive and accessible. Blanket bans on groups considered vulnerable will only serve to reinforce discrimination and therefore we advocate a focus on mitigate and managing risk and working with volunteers as individuals and responding to what they feel comfortable with.

 

Keep up to date with official local and national guidance:

Be sure to regularly check and take guidance on health, safety and wellbeing from the recognised channels and authorities:

Central Government (UK) - https://www.gov.uk/coronavirushttps://www.gov.uk/guidance/enabling-safe-and-effective-volunteering-dur...

NHS England - https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/

Manchester City Council - https://secure.manchester.gov.uk/info/500361/coronavirus

We also have a collection of resources and guidance. See: https://www.manchestercommunitycentral.org/coronavirus-advice-and-resources.


If you are looking for online training, Volunteering Scotland has also produced a comprehensive new  module - Keeping Volunteers Safe: Restarting your Volunteer Programme
 

Reoccupying buildings:


Many organisations will not be able to deliver services remotely therefore, will have to reopen your building. You can find specific information on reopening buildings on the dedicated section of this website.

Checklist for reoccupying buildings – (UK Wide) 23rd June 2020

Returning to work safely


Managing Risk:

Covid-19 means we can’t avoid that risk plays a big role our every day lives. It is now at the forefront of our minds and this may not be a wholly bad thing for the voluntary sector who have traditionally been risk avoidant. We can move to a place of managing and embracing risk rather than fearing and avoiding it. This can be done through robust risk assessment a big prt of which is making plans equipping volunteers with the information and equipment they need to maintain their minimise risk to their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others.

Bristol Council example risk assessment*

*Note in this example that volunteers considered vulnerable are not barred from volunteering, the risk is just managed. 

WCVA Example risk assessment

 

Salford CVS has produced a series of risk assessment templates and toolkits, and these are collected below.

VCSE Covid Workforce and Workplace Risk Assessent

Covid Self Assessment Form

VCSE Individual Risk Assessment for Frontline Staff and Volunteers in Community Settings

 

Track and Trace:
 

As part of managing risk you may decide to implement collect contact information from visitors to your site so that, if a volunteer or staff member becomes in you can inform NHS Test and Trace with. You can find more information here.

The Information Commissioner’s Office has put together advice for organisations and small businesses that are asked by government to collect and retain customer and visitor information, for a limited time period, for the purposes of a COVID-19 contact tracing scheme.

There is also an online tool from Time to Spare which is free to registered charites. This provides a secure way to securely keep a register of visitors to your site or activity.

 

Insurance:

Have you checked that your insurance covers volunteers in the event they contract Covid-19? Rob Jackson did a straw poll on twitter and found that 81% of the 26 respondents had not checked with their insurers. 

NCVO Insurance and Volunteering
NCVO Insurance, volunteering and coronavirus

Also if you want to engage volunteer drivers they may need to check with their insurer that they are covered to use their car for volunteering. According to the Association of British Insurers ther is no need to contact your car insurance provider if you are a volunteer helping the fight against Coronavirus - but vounteers may want to check that their volunteering falls into this. 

 

Safeguarding:

You may be working with larger numbers of volunteers and service users, working closer with your service users or offering new services in response to new needs. This makes it even more important that volunteers and staff have a good understanding of safeguarding and your procedures for reporting as well as the measures your organisations have in place to mitigate risk (see above).

We have created a guide for volunteers on what steps to take, and what signs to look out for. You may want to look at this as a base for the information you share with volunteers, supplementing it with any organisational specific safeguarding information.


Safeguarding for volunteer managers

Safeguarding for informal volunteer-led groups

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Back to Covid Recovery resources for Volunteer managers

 

Volunteer Centre Manchester