Keeping Volunteers Safe: Restarting your Volunteer Programme
This course is about the essential things you need to consider to ensure a positive experience for individuals returning to engage in volunteering following suspension of programmes in response to Covid-19. The overall aim is to help you prepare your volunteers, organisation and colleagues to return to supporting volunteer involvement in your work. It was developed with input from volunteers, volunteer-involving groups and organisations, volunteer practitioners and trainers. This input has given us the volunteers’ perspective and the volunteers’ ‘voice’ that we hope you will find helpful throughout the course.
4. Adapting to Change: Roles and Responsibilities
4.1. Keeping your Volunteers Safe
You have a “duty
of care” to keep your volunteers safe. The “duty of care” has a range of different
parts to it; this section looks at Health and Safety for volunteers and risk
assessment. One of the issues for people supporting volunteers is that it is
not always clear where volunteers sit in a group or organisational and even
broader societal health and safety practices. The legislation is generally employee
focused, and volunteers are not employees. Thinking through how relevant
Health and Safety advice applies to your context means thinking about the
sector in which your group or organisations operates and the tasks volunteers
perform. Earlier, we used the example of volunteers in retail, the HSE advice
for retail still applies, for example, manual handling is still manual handling,
and the same information advice and guidance applies now. So the HSE advice for
Charity Shops Risk Assessment Tool
and is still valid.
However, while some of the risks have not changed, it is clear that others have changed. Risk management and safety specialist Cardinus has produced a useful checklist for group or organisations to consider when thinking about restarting operations. The resource is on the US site the structure; however, the approach is relevant across sectors.
Volunteer Scotland have produced a comprehensive risk assessment which can be adapted to suit your situation and will help you think through and manage risks in your context. Volunteer Scotland Coronavirus in the Workplace Risk Assessment
At an organisational level, you can use these tools to develop your approach. For example, Paths for All is a group that encourages people to be more active, and volunteers play an essential part in the development and delivery of activities. As well as developing a specific Risk Assessment tool, they also have guidance notes and support, which could be tailored to suit your situation.
While Health and Safety advice, legal and legislative frameworks remain broadly similar, please remember that during the COVID-19 period, Public Health messages change the nature of risk and safeguarding volunteers. We would encourage you to review this changing environment continually.