debbieu's blog

I, like many others, am sickened by the news today of a nursery worker who was convicted of enabling the assault of children in her care, as well as abusing them herself.

This is a case that came to light by coincidence and not because any of the children concerned made any complaints or comments that aroused suspicion. The nursery worker had been subject to CRB checking, and was clear.

It once again highlights the need for safe recruitment processes for anyone who will be engaged with children and or vulnerable adults, and to follow these up with regular and robust supervision.

CRB checks or indeed the vetting and barring scheme is no replacement for these.

I believe that in order to avoid a similarly explosive incident involving volunteers we MUST call on our employing organisations to properly invest in the management of volunteers. Please get in touch with AVM if you need us to support your call for help within your agency, and to share with us what has been happening in your organisation to help to develop and maintain safe recruitment and ongoing support of volunteers.

You can do this anonymously if you prefer by creating a new ID name.

In the news today we hear that parents of children attending sports events, who give lifts to other children will be considered volunteers, and will therefore have to be CRB checked.

Last time I looked there was so much more to recruiting and managing volunteers than a CRB check.

• Who will be doing the values-based interviews that help to ascertain an individual's suitability in the event of them never having had a complaint or allegation made against them? (All too likely given the reluctance of most victims to speak out)
• Who will brief and debrief these parents?
• Who will ensure that they attend Child protection training?
• Who will thank them, introduce them to other volunteers, pay their expenses and ensure that the volunteering that they do continues to fulfill their motivations?

What no one? This has not even been considered? Well then, maybe they are parents helping their children (and their children's friends) out and not volunteers at all. I do think that we need to be careful when allowing others to help out with our children or any other vulnerable family members that we are caring for, but there are many ways to assess the risks and many measures we can put in place. And parents are the best people to decide what is best for their own child surely?

I do think that if we call an activity volunteering, then we as a community of professionals (even if unpaid or unlabelled) have a responsibility to talk about how it is managed, and to set a standard of what we consider to be good and poor management standards.

Where we have not been enabled to implement those standards do we want to distance ourselves from that activity? What do others think?

Sean Cobley has been appointed as the new chair of the Association of Volunteer Managers. Sean takes over from John Ramsey who led on developing the Association since its inception.

Sean, a founding member of AVM, is also Head Office Volunteer Manager at Breakthrough Breast Cancer. He said:

"I very much hope that I can do justice to the great legacy that John has left. Volunteer management is entering an exciting and formative stage of its development. With the support of our members I hope that I can help develop AVM further to meet the challenges our profession faces."

John Ramsey, who will be stepping down from the board in September said:

"Sean is the ideal person, not just to take AVM to the next level of its development but to really make the breakthrough in convincing organisations that investing in volunteer management is the difference in ensuring effective sustainable volunteering"

NEW: 'Fresh Training' Free training opportunities from Modernising Volunteering

Don't know your LinkedIn from your Twitter? Wondering how Facebook and MySpace can support you in recruiting volunteers or communicating with members? Or perhaps you're feeling overwhelmed by the growth in enquiries from members and companies looking for employee volunteering opportunities?

Then help is at hand through 'Fresh Thinking', a series of free training seminars and workshops, brought to you by Red Foundation through the Modernising Volunteering programme.  

Through the 'Fresh Training' programme we will be running a half day seminar to provide an introduction to working with social networks, aimed at volunteer support service workers who are thinking of or just starting to use these networks for volunteer recruitment and communication with their peers or members.

managers and other infrastructure bodies on strategies to advise and support their memberRunning alongside side this will be a half day advanced workshop for volunteer centre organisations to respond to the growth in enquiries from companies looking for employee volunteering opportunities.

Both sessions will be held on the same day, am and pm, so you will have the opportunity to attend both although places on the employee volunteering session will be limited due to their workshop format. Dates and locations are listed below. Bookings are being managed by Red's CCI team, so please email fabia@redfoundation.org to reserve your place.

We look forward to seeing you!

'Fresh Training' - Locations and dates

Carrie Botten and Professor Jo Silvester at City University are researching the skills and strategies required to manage volunteers in the charity sector.

The focus of the research is how volunteers and their managers can best be supported and developed.

To take part, visit: www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Czsn28Ky_2fReRRZsMuosdEA_3d_3d

The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete. They will share the survey results with AVM when complete.

Happy Volunteers Week!! And it should be a happy time, volunteering as an activity is increasing and I would hope that that is an indicator that people are happy doing it.

Over the past few years there has been an increase in the amount of money that has been invested in the development of volunteering. There has been project funding for the recruitment of specific groups of volunteers such as young people, disabled people and people from socially disadvantaged groups for example.

And the recent economic situation has lead to more investment in volunteering with programmes dedicated to enabling people who are out of work to retain their skills or develop new ones, there should be more people than ever before having a Happy Volunteers week this year.

So, my question is - is volunteering the happy experience we hope it will be? The 1997 National Survey of Volunteering in the UK (www.ivr.org.uk) found that the benefits that people reported from volunteering include enjoying the activity, the satisfaction of seeing results, meeting people and a sense of personal achievement. These were in addition to more tangible benefits such as the opportunity to learn new skills, get a qualification and gain a position within the community.

Following on from the wise words of my colleague Sean last month, if volunteers are people who make a free choice about being involved in our organisations, should we perhaps take that free choice further and enable volunteers to choose what and how they get involved. In other words... do volunteers need to be managed?

Before you all start rallying and protesting, bear with me a minute or two. Let us start with the presumption that most people who volunteer do so because they support a particular organisation, and because they want to be helpful.

Continue the theme - most people who volunteer have some skills, some experience, some knowledge and some common sense. Let us assume that most people who volunteer could probably come into many organisations and see for themselves what needs to be done, they can make a reasonable assessment of whether they are capable of doing the task, they can ask for help or information when they need it, and competently get on with the task in hand.

How true are these presumptions? Do the people who support our organisations always support the progressive steps that we take? Do people who have some personal experience of the causes that our organisations support always know enough to be helpful? Can people easily come in and see what needs doing or are our most imperative tasks those that are hidden?

Calling all volunteer managers!

Red Foundation has launched a new online survey to look at the support available to volunteer managers and volunteers who run projects. Are volunteer managers isolated in their work? Do you get to speak with other volunteer managers? Do you use Facebook to reach other people doing work like yours? Or to reach volunteers? Where do you get the information you need? How do you learn how best to recruit and manage volunteers?

This survey is part of the Modernising Volunteering Improving Support project which will inform the work of front-line support providers. This means that what you tell us will have a genuine impact on what support volunteer managers and volunteer-led projects will have in the future. If you want change - tell us! If you want things to stay the way they are - tell us!

Steve wrote recently on UKVPMs that he had advocated regional volunteer management strategies in his last post in a national organisation, but was looked at blankly.

I have recently been working in a national organisation with a centralised volunteering strategy role and certainly one of the things I thought was that if I were setting up a department from scratch there should be a regional element to it, fitting in with the way that the volunteering infrastructure has been organised as well as taking into consideration local needs as well as local opportunities for recruiting volunteers, other local organisations to work in partnership - and so much more.

Kate and I were having a coffee the other day (well term of expression - she was drinking herbal tea and I had a fruit juice). Anyway, she said that she has a concern about the rising trend of organisations engaging consultants to develop a volunteering strategy. It raised questions for me - do I agree with her or not? (Bearing in mind that as a consultant this is one of the things that I do?)

The Association of Volunteer Managers welcomes the report from the Commission on the Future of Volunteering. We're pleased to see a number of recommendations that are intended to increase both the numbers of opportunities for volunteers and the numbers of people volunteering. For a range of reasons including increased regulation and inspection, as well as the diversification of the volunteer-force, the management of volunteers is becoming increasingly complex.

The UK Workforce Hub are currently undertaking a project to review and refresh the Management of Volunteers National Occupational Standards to ensure they meet the needs of managers in the voluntary and community sector through to 2014.

We are inviting you to take part in a consultation process which asks you to contribute your views on the draft standards which have been updated by a steering group and a consultant. It begins on the 18^th October will run until 18^th January 2008.

There are 2 ways in which you can have your say:

Open letter to the editor of The Observer:

Martin Newland and his respondents highlight that there are sometimes obstacles in place preventing a smooth transition into volunteering.

The Association of Volunteer Managers is campaigning to highlight the difficulties that those working with volunteers face in recruiting and placing volunteers.

It is not unusual for an organisation with over 200 volunteers to have one volunteer manager (perhaps part time, perhaps a volunteer themselves, perhaps with no arrangement in place for continuity in their absence) with sole responsibility for recruiting, training and supporting volunteers in their roles. It is not unusual for an organisation to have a volunteer manager who takes the lead responsibility for involving volunteers as part of an already very full workload. It is not unusual for a volunteer manager to be paid significantly less than their colleagues within their organisations. It is not unusual for volunteer managers to be in posts that have project rather than core funding.