Volunteering for Health (VfH) is a £10 million national programme funded by NHS England, NHS Charities Together and CW+, designed to harness the contribution of volunteering to health and social care at both national and local levels. In Northamptonshire, the programme is delivered by Voluntary Impact Northamptonshire (VIN), on behalf of Northamptonshire Health and Care Volunteering (NHCV), through a partnership involving health, voluntary and community sector organisations.

 

Delivery commenced in April 2025 and is scheduled to continue until June 2027. The Northamptonshire evaluation is delivered by the Institute for Social Innovation and Impact (ISII) at the University of Northampton (UON), and provides a locally focused assessment of the programme, recognising the importance of understanding local context, alongside the national evaluation. The Report evaluation below examines progress against three core programme aims:

 

•                 Embedding volunteering strategically within the health and care system

•                 Developing and improving volunteer infrastructure

•                 Improving the diversity of the volunteer workforce.

 

The Interim findings can be found here.

• 2,653 volunteers engaged and almost 50,000 volunteering hours delivered across participating organisations.
• Strong evidence that volunteering is contributing to prevention, wellbeing, reducing isolation and strengthening community connections.
• Positive engagement with people who can experience barriers to volunteering and healthcare, including people with lived experience, minority ethnic communities, neurodiverse individuals, and people facing multiple disadvantage.
• Significant organisational benefits through improved volunteer infrastructure, training, partnership working, and organisational capability.
• An indicative social value of £3.39 million generated through volunteering, training, wellbeing, and self-efficacy improvements.

Russell Rolph, the CEO of VIN states:

VfH is one of several large-scale projects that VIN has been involved in over recent years and followed on the back of Connect Northamptonshire. Infrastructure continues to bring funding into the sector and connect people and sectors together. If you work in the community sector, you will already be aware of how vital volunteering is, but the truth is that not every sector appreciates or understands its worth – and the figure of 3.39M in Social Value is hard to ignore. I do not believe that we are going to achieve the Left Shift to prevention without voluntary organisations and an army of volunteers. Systems must recognise and move on this.