About this guidance

Our volunteers are at the heart of what we do and are an integral part of an effective Healthwatch. From speaking to local people to find out their views, to using this information to influence those who run services, volunteers play a vital role at Healthwatch.

This guide aims to support Healthwatch Volunteer Managers with:

• Recruitment
• Induction 
• Management and support
• Measuring impact and evaluation

It offers best practice guidance to help you connect with different parts of your community and ensure that equality, diversity and inclusion is embedded into your volunteering program. 

As part of our new suite of guidance documents to support how you work with volunteers, we have produced a Volunteer Handbook and a Volunteer Agreement. Both of these documents are available for you to download and adapt to your local needs. 

These resources aim to ensure that commitments and expectations are clear on both sides to help everyone get the most out of the volunteering experience. 

Volunteer Handbook

It is good practice to provide your volunteers with a handbook as a useful reference tool. Our template includes information on who we are and what we do, an overview of the roles and responsibilities of Healthwatch volunteers, and a summary of the policies and procedures that you should have in place to support your volunteers.

Volunteer Agreement

This template agreement sets out your commitment to your volunteers. It also outlines what you what them to get out of volunteering with you and what you expect from them in return.

About this guidance

As part of our new suite of support, we have produced a volunteer policy and a volunteer expenses policy for you to download and use locally. 

Volunteer policy

This sets out your commitment to volunteering, the principles of how you involve volunteers and what people can expect whilst volunteering with you.

It should include information on

• recruitment
• training and support
• your approach to recruiting and supporting volunteers
• how volunteers will be supported and treated fairly and consistently
• what they can do if things go wrong 

Your staff team should be aware of this policy, so they fully understand why volunteers are involved and what role they have within your Healthwatch.

Volunteer expenses policy

This policy outlines what expenses you will cover for your volunteers and the processes they would need to take to claim their expenses back. 

Working with partners to undertake research projects can be very beneficial. However, it is also important for you to maintain independence when delivering your statutory duties as an independent champion for the health and social care services users. 

This guidance will help you to understand why you should work with other organisations on research projects. It includes examples of previous Healthwatch research with successful partnerships, tips on how to maintain independence and how to manage intellectual property rights when working with partners. 

It is a legal requirement for every local Healthwatch to produce an annual report by 30 June each year. Your annual report must be sent to:

• Healthwatch England
• Care Quality Commission
• NHS England
• Any Clinical Commissioning Group that falls within your local authority area
• The Overview and Scrutiny Committee of your local Authority
• The local authority who commission your service

Templates

The templates have been produced in PowerPoint and InDesign. You can download and use these below, or by visiting the Communications Centre. If you are having trouble accessing the Communications Centre please email hub@healthwatch.co.uk

Support

This year there is lots of support available to help you produce your annual report, including images, graphics and webinars. 

Find out more

About this guidance

Volunteers are vital to the work that we do. Thousands of people give their time, commitment and energy for their Local Healthwatch to help make a difference to their community. 

This resource includes a variety of volunteer role descriptions to help you to recruit volunteers to support your Healthwatch. We have worked with Healthwatch across the country to identify the key volunteer roles and their responsibilities.

We have also included a number of volunteer roles that can be done remotely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

All these descriptions can be adapted to suit your needs.

Role descriptions included

This document contains information about the following role descriptions:

1. Online Feedback Collector Volunteer
2. Information and Signposting volunteer 
3. Digital Communications Volunteer/ Social Media Volunteer
4. Publications and Document Editor Volunteer
5. Enter and View Volunteer
6. Virtual Visitor Volunteer
7. Board Members/Trustees Advisory Group 
8. Community Engagement and Outreach Volunteer
9. Research Volunteer
10. Administration Volunteer
11. Healthwatch representation Volunteer
12. Healthwatch Champion/Ambassador Volunteer

Additional information

It also includes the following information to include in your role descriptions:

• The benefits of volunteering
• How much time is involved
• How to apply

About this resource

If we make a mistake, it’s important that we work quickly to put things right and learn from what has happened. Whether someone gives you a comment, a suggestion, feedback or makes a formal complaint about the work of Healthwatch, it provides a valuable opportunity to identify issues and to improve our work.

Having a clear complaints policy and process can help you:

• Create a positive experience by welcoming feedback and making it easy for people to raise concerns or make a complaint.
• Provide an appropriate, compassionate and timely resolution for all parties.
• Promote a positive organisational culture of learning and improvement.
• Give staff the confidence and freedom to offer fair remedies to put things right when needed, and to act to make sure any learning is identified and acted on to improve services.

What is the normal process for complaints?

An individual is normally encouraged to raise their concern with your local Healthwatch. If they are not satisfied there may be an option to escalate the complaint to the organisation which provides the Healthwatch service and/or the local authority which commissions it. 

Every Local Healthwatch should have a published conflict of interest policy to demonstrate its independence and meet the requirements of being an effective local Healthwatch. This guidance helps you to assess whether your current policy is fit for purpose, or in need of a refresh.  

It explains:

• what a conflict of interest is
• why you need a policy
• what you need to do if you encounter a conflict of interest.

We've also provided templates to help you meet the requirements which you can use and adapt at your local Healthwatch:

1. A declaration of interest form
2. A register of interest form

Every local Healthwatch should have a published code of conduct policy to demonstrate to the public how you bring to life your organisational values. This guidance helps you to assess whether your current policy is fit for purpose, or in need of a refresh.  

It includes:

• Why you need a policy and the importance of ensuring it is tailored to meet the needs of your staff and volunteers.
• Direction on what can be included and what to do when there is a breach of conduct. It also gives additional ideas regarding Trustees and how they can commit to your team’s agreed code of conduct.
• A template for a code of conduct and a trustee agreement, which you can adopt and adapt to your team’s needs.

To ensure that your research is as good as it possibly can be, you should make every effort to quality assure your research. To ensure that our research is robust and impactful, we should quality assure our research at multiple points through the research process. 

This guidance will help you to consider when to check your work and offers tips on the best ways to do this with examples of how you might apply these in practice.

Don't forget, the Research and Insight Team can offer two peer reviews per Local Healthwatch each year.