The value of volunteers at Victim Support

so volunteers incredibly important to victim support. We have a number of different roles that people are carrying out at the moment, and we do have staff members who deliver our service, and they go through a certain amount of training, which is quite comprehensive. It's, um it's really rigorous. It takes a while for even the staff members to get through that training

And we have, uh, certain roles that volunteers are undertaken that are very similar to what the what the staff members are doing. They go through exactly the same training. They go through exactly the same preparation, and they are given that time to us for free, which I think is fantastic

And they are supporting people in that particular role who have been through some really difficult traumatic periods in their life, and they're doing it because they want to help. And I think that's an incredibly important thing for us to have as an organisation. Some of the other roles are helping us understand what we've done right where we can improve

Um, and, uh, we have volunteers who are calling people who've been through our service, um, to give us their experience about you know what it was like being a victim of crime, and that is hugely valuable to us, uh, to to have that victim's voice. Um, uh, you know, some people going through it in their own words in, you know, their experiencing in their own words. Um, And we take from that a huge amount of lessons learned

And if we've done something good, that's that's fantastic. And we also have volunteers who are reaching out to sections of the community that perhaps haven't heard of us who can't get to us for whatever reason. So they do some fantastic work, and, uh, yeah, all I can thank them is Thank you for their time, their effort

Because, um, yeah, they're superstars. So yeah, uh, diversity is incredibly important. Everything that we do, we have to make sure that we are, um, giving everybody equal access to our our service

And we try to recruit in a in in the same way give everybody equal access to, um, not just staff vacancies, but volunteering, uh, vacancies. We want to make sure that we try and represent in our volunteering team the communities that we, um that we support and we do that by making sure that we display our, um, commitment to diversity and the adverts that we put out, Um, and at all times, we are, you know, making amendments and and and changes to the way that we work so that we can, um we can have as many people apply as possible and give them opportunities regardless of who they are, where they come from. And we try and advertise in as many places as possible as well

Um, and reach those areas of the communities who again don't know who we are, what we do. And if they want to help, um, then we we don't put any barriers in their way. Um, there's more than we can do

Um, we're always looking for, um, more ways to, uh, more avenues for volunteers to apply. Um, and that's that's a simple case of just getting out there, talking to people in our communities, going to universities, going to events, going to community events held by sort of local groups, local councils, and and and just making sure that people realise that we're we're here. Um, this is our service

This is what we do. Here's how how we can help you. But here's how you can help us if you really want to

Um and and And, you know, we we try our best to, um, you know, have have the door open to as many people as possible. OK, thank you very much for your time today.