Nesta will back up to 15 hospitals in England to improve and grow their volunteering services. The ‘Helping in Hospitals’ programme includes up to £1.5m funding support from the Innovation Fund, part of the joint Nesta and Cabinet Office Centre for Social Action.

Hospitals – including acute trusts, mental health trusts and foundation trusts – are invited to apply to the Helping in Hospitals programme to significantly expand the reach and impact of their volunteering services. In turn, it is expected that this will help improve the experience of patients and their families and friends in hospitals. It will also help hospitals to measure the impact of volunteers on patient satisfaction and the effect on discharge, recovery and wellbeing.

The Helping in Hospitals programme will back both hospitals that want to consolidate the impact of existing volunteer services and trial innovative new practice; and more traditional hospital volunteer services that they want to transform.

The Helping in Hospitals programme is launched as the King’s Fund publish a report estimating that every pound invested in volunteering in the NHS yields services worth £11 in return. The report1 highlights the benefits volunteers bring to the health service – from befriending to supporting patients to eat well – but notes that few trusts formally measure the impact of volunteers.

The programme is inspired by a cluster of hospitals across England that are already running innovative volunteer services. One of these is King’s College Hospital which started with the simple idea of asking staff what more they would like to do to help patients but couldn’t because they don’t have time. This generated a list of simple, humane acts of kindness, from welcoming and guiding people around the building, to running errands and talking to patients or holding their hands while they wait for surgery.

Over the last year, Nesta and Cabinet Office have been backing King’s College Hospital through a grant to significantly increase the number of volunteers. Applicants responded in their thousands and the hospital now deploys over 1000 volunteers a month – up from 150 a year ago – who have all committed to regular volunteering over a year. King’s College Hospital has seen a positive increase in patient satisfaction; the ambition is that the Helping with Hospitals programme will give other hospitals the chance to do the same.

Minister for Civil Society Nick Hurd said, “Kings College Hospital have shown how an ambitious Hospital volunteering programme can improve staff morale and patient experience. The King’s Fund research tells us that £1 invested in volunteers gives Hospitals a return of £11. So we want this fund to encourage other hospitals to think bigger about the opportunity to give more people the chance to make a difference in their local hospital.”

Interested applicants to Helping in Hospitals programme are asked to register by 5 December 2013 here. 

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Notes to editor

For media enquires please contact Ben King in the Cabinet Office press office on 020 7267 144 / [email protected] or Sarah Reardon in the Nesta press office on 020 7438 2606 / [email protected]

• 1Volunteering in acute trusts in England: Understanding the scale and impact, King’s Fund, November 2013 www.kingsfund.org.uk/volunteers
• The Centre for Social Action is a Cabinet Office initiative – with Nesta (www.nesta.org.uk) running the Innovation Fund. Over 2013/14 – 2014/15 the Centre for Social Action will invest around £36m to provide support and finance to charities, public services and civil society organisations who want to mobilise people to take part in social action.