Effective support and personal development for your volunteers is at the heart of your programme. Regular skilled supervision is vital for supporting and nurturing your volunteers and for maintaining high quality support for parents. Information about how to deliver skilled, meaningful and effective supervision is in our Setting up guide .
Excellent induction processes will help your volunteers to feel confident, well prepared and a valued part of your programme. The office administration system you have set up for your volunteers will help you to track each volunteer’s journey from start to finish.
While it’s reasonable to expect a degree of turnover of volunteers (annual retention rates for Community Parent Programmes is around 65%), high quality training, supervision and support are the most critical elements in retention.
Volunteer retention strategies include:
- A relationship of trust, respect, autonomy and rapport between the coordinator and each volunteer
- Being clear about the time commitment needed to carry out the role and having clear boundaries
- Providing a high-quality training programme that nurtures a mutually supportive group learning experience and a sense of shared endeavour
- Good communication and prompt payment of expenses
- Supervision that enables volunteers to feel valued and supported, and facilitates individual reflection and personal growth
- Easy access to ad hoc individual support and advice.
Barriers to retention include:
- Poor volunteer recruitment strategy
- Insufficient coordinating time
- Poor administration
- Delays between finishing introductory training and having parents to support
- Perceived unfair distribution of parents to support
- Volunteers feel out of their depth
- Volunteers underestimated the time commitment needed.
It is important to gain feedback from your volunteers about the quality of their volunteering experience.
Carrying out an annual review with each volunteer and gaining volunteers’ views when they leave will give valuable insights into what’s going well and whether improvements could be made.
Examples can be downloaded here:
Exit questionnaire during volunteer training
Added 04/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
Exit questionnaire after active volunteering
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Volunteer peer supporter annual review
Added 04/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
Emotional
- Provide regular, high-quality supervision (this is crucial and its importance should be emphasised during volunteer training)
- Make sure the volunteer handbook provides guidance about the staff team and who to contact for advice and support
- Have clear lines of accountability regarding who to contact should there be a safeguarding concern
- Ensure easy access to telephone support.
Physical
- Ensure risk assessments are carried out on all parents requesting one-to-one support and also updated as more information is gained (form downloadable below)
- Carry out risk assessments for all community outreach activities (form downloadable below)
- Ensure that public liability and employers’ liability insurance is in place that explicitly covers the roles of volunteers
- Ensure volunteers have car insurance for business purposes or confirmation from their insurance company that they are covered for their volunteer activities (if relevant).
Financial
- Manage the budget carefully to ensure you can fully reimburse volunteers for all valid out of pocket expenses (mileage, bus fares etc.)
- Support volunteers in completing any forms and ensuring they are submitted on time
- Data protection and information sharing procedures for volunteers need to be in line with current GDPR guidance.
Advise volunteers of the procedure to use if they wish to complain about their treatment by paid staff, users, board members or other volunteers, and that, whenever possible, issues will be resolved informally.
Initial visit risk assessment
Added 03/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
Outreach venue risk assessment
Added 03/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
- Ground rules around confidentiality, safeguarding and protecting personal data are important
- Give clear guidance on them during training and in the Volunteer Handbook (downloadable below)
- Volunteers are asked to sign up to them during induction
- Reinforce ground rules on an ongoing basis and ensure they are adhered to
- If a volunteer repeatedly ‘crosses the lines’ it is clear they are unsuitable for the role and appropriate action will need to be taken by the programme coordinator.
Use the four “Rs” below to help your volunteers become familiar with boundaries, ground rules, policies and procedures:
- Reassure volunteers that you are there to help and guide them
- Reinforce them by referring to them during ongoing training and supervision sessions
- Revisit them as needed if you notice things aren’t being followed or forgotten
- Remind volunteers about how sticking to the guidelines helps to keep them and the families they support feeling safe and supported.
Volunteer Handbook
Added 03/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
Good relationships with local professionals are key to the success and sustainability of your volunteer initiative.
Issues around tensions between professionals and volunteers may arise, so it’s important to know the important messages to convey to professionals.