Celebrating our volunteers – Judy’s story
We want to celebrate the achievements of our volunteers, and share some of their stories with you.
Our volunteers contributed an amazing 1176 hours of their time over the past year. They have been involved in all sorts of activities including capturing people’s feedback of local health and care services, conducting surveys, inputting data, providing information on local services, running discussion groups, representing Healthwatch at events and meetings, and lots more.
Even though, due to coronavirus, we aren’t able to offer volunteers the usual opportunities they are still helping us by completing and sharing online surveys with friends and family to make sure our reach is as large as possible together with raising awareness of who we are and what we do. We are also talking about volunteers running some online discussion groups and listening to health and social care feedback on the phone. So much is possible with the right direction, determination and resources. We are very proud of our volunteers.
We want to hear from you if you are interested in volunteering with Healthwatch. Although we can’t follow our usual recruitment and training process for now we are keen to talk to you about the sort of volunteer opportunities we have and how you can get involved in the future.
Contact Amanda, Volunteer and Engagement Coordinator at a.graydon@hwnt.co.uk, call 0191 263 5321 or fill in our volunteer interest form
Judy Scott came to Healthwatch as a volunteer and now she is Chair of Healthwatch North Tyneside:
“I came to volunteer with Healthwatch via a stand at my local library and just loved it -the volunteer co-ordinator and staff, my fellow volunteers and the people we talked to. I loved being part of a team doing something that was important and useful.”
“I did my first year or so interviewing people in care homes, and got to know how Healthwatch worked. I felt I could offer more, so applied to be a Trustee, as well as still doing some volunteer interviews so I didn’t lose touch with the people whose views we are here to represent. Last year we needed a chairperson and I was lucky enough to be offered the role, and to be even more involved in setting our strategic direction, meeting the decision makers and trying to make sure the voices of local people are heard and responded to.”
“I still want to be part of the volunteer team if I have time – I enjoy meeting and listening to people, and it means when I’m involved in formal meetings and decisions about services are being made, I can speak about people’s views first hand.”