Figure 6: Thinking About Volunteering (Volunteer Scotland, All Rights Reserved)

The title of this section feels presumptuous. It suggests that the volunteer programme ought to restart. However, to make an informed choice about if, how and when volunteers will return or scale up to full volunteering, you ought to reflect on these two steps:

• First, you will reflect on the plans you want to deliver by involving volunteers and understanding how volunteers see themselves in relation to those plans;
• Second, you will ask a series of questions to help you assess whether it is time for volunteers to return and if so how

These steps are not sequential, they involve a dialogue, and you will need to move between volunteers and their needs, the group or organisation and its capabilities and changes in the world around you. Before you can do this, you need to be clear what you want individuals to do and ask what individuals would like to do and how they would like to contribute. It means understanding what your group or organisation plans to deliver, and whether your volunteers can fit into that plan safely and effectively. For example, those individuals within the over-70 group need to take additional care, and this is described on NHS inform as

”strictly follow physical distancing measures...their household and other contacts should also strictly follow physical distancing advice.”

The guidance does not preclude older people from volunteering in line with the easing of lockdown relevant to your group or organisation and the places you operate. However, the interpretation of the NHS inform advice becomes critical. Here we use the example of the over-70 group. Age UK offers advice on how people over 70 can volunteer safely. As we know, some volunteering roles come with higher risks than others. For example, volunteering in a hospital will be riskier than over-the-phone befriending. Sometimes it won’t be obvious how risky your role is. The following questions can help you to think through the risks: 

• Will you have face-to-face contact with people you don’t live with?
• Will you be in contact with the same people each time or different people? The more people you come into contact with the higher the risk of transmission.
• Will you be around people who may be more exposed to COVID-19? For example, health professionals?
• Will you be able to socially distance from other people?

In other areas, the restrictions may provide opportunities for group or organisations to reflect on who volunteers with them and why. Kilmaurs Gala Committee, after reviewing the COVID-19 situation in March 2020, the committee decided to follow the public health and Scottish Government guidelines. This resulted in their Summer activities and volunteering roles to be suspended until 2021. As the  the guidelines and information was adapted the committee was able to adapt some activities such as, instead of village car treasurer hunt it is now a walking treasure hunt (following social distancing rules) and a quiz night was moved to an online platform. Youth volunteering charity Project Scotland used the opportunities offered by everyone being at home and online to develop a programme to support disabled people to volunteer online. This included people with disabilities offering streaming free exercise classes online. You can find more details on the Volunteer Scotland blog page ‘Sports volunteering and coronavirus’ and ‘Is there a role for disabled volunteers in the response to Covid-19?’.