Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 41 of the Government's August 2018 Civil Society Strategy, what steps his Department has taken with NHS England to strengthen volunteering within the NHS, spreading impact volunteering opportunities in priority areas across the NHS.

The Department is committed to working closely with NHS England on delivering the ambitions in the NHS Long Term Plan.

The Long Term Plan sets out well designed volunteering initiatives, including a £2.3 million programme to fund Helpforce. The aim of the programme is to build an infrastructure for volunteering in the National Health Service so that it is ready to be adopted at scale across the service and to develop a model of support for all volunteering which operate in NHS settings.

Helpforce is working with 12 NHS hospital trusts to develop high-impact volunteer innovations that will be refined and shared to help other trusts in the United Kingdom adopt effective volunteer services.