Volunteer Support

The aim of the project was to evaluate the work of the Volunteer Centre in helping ‘vulnerable’ members of the local community find non-paid work. Volunteering saves very considerable expenditure on a range of statutory budgets and attempts are now being made to evaluate this saving at a national scale. This report continued the investigation into the contribution of volunteering to the local economy.

Project Outline

Volunteer Centre Brighton and Hove

Now: seeks to improve the quality of life of local people and develop opportunities for people to help others, and in the process, develop their own skills and potential, through volunteering.

The Volunteer Centre attracts a number of people that are vulnerable who are interested in volunteering but is currently unable to offer them anything beyond a referral. There is a strong body of research that indicates that volunteering can have a big impact on vulnerable people’s life career and progress.

With assistance from Cupp a piece of research, which involved a number of face to face interviews with current identified volunteers and voluntary and community organisations, looked into this area and improved the Volunteer Centre’s support mechanisms and structure for on going care to this group. It helped identify critical success factors and provided indicators to improve the quality of service and support to vulnerable volunteers thereby improving their life chances and also the capacity offered by these volunteers to organisations.

Project Partners

Volunteer Centre Brighton

The Volunteer Centre Brighton & Hove is a quality accredited member of Volunteering England, focusing its work on six core areas: • Strategic development of volunteering

• Good practice in the management of volunteers

• Development of volunteering opportunities

• Policy response and campaigning

• Brokerage of volunteering opportunities

• Marketing volunteering

Former HSPRC - now SSPARC at the University of Brighton

In order to reflect the breadth of the centre's research interests they changed the name from Health and Social Policy Research Centre (HSPRC) to the Social Science Policy and Research Centre: SSPARC.The SSPARC research still includes health and social policy but now also encompasses criminology, sociology, psychology, psychosocial studies, public policy and politics. The centre runs professional courses in social work, counselling and psychotherapy, and applied interests in other areas of social practice such as work with substance misusers and community development.