NHS Volunteer Responders – rural areas

NHS Volunteer Responders – rural areas

Cheshire West Voluntary Action is helping recruit more volunteers in rural parts of west Cheshire through the NHS Volunteer Responders programme to add to the existing volunteer workforce in these areas.

This is part of an Evaluating and Embedding NHS Volunteer Responders project to look at how the GoodSAM app can be used in the medium and longer term to embed volunteers in communities.

Feedback from primary care networks (PCNs) was that transport to and from appointments in rural areas was still a struggle so that's why we're focusing on these areas.

For more information go to https://chesterva.org.uk/volunteers-have-never-been-more-important-in-rural-areas/

This approach is not intended to compete with volunteers or services already in place in these rural areas, but we're just running a short pilot to see how the NHS Volunteer Responders programme can perhaps complement that in the medium to longer term.