Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of the discontinuation of the NHS and Care Volunteer Responders on other parts of the NHS.

The NHS and Care Volunteer Responders (NHSCVR) programme was first established as part of the COVID-19 response and then adapted to respond to other organisational pressures. Most patients were referred into the programme by a health professional for short-term support through the NHSCVR programme. However, a model that worked well in a national crisis is no longer the most cost-effective way of facilitating the important contribution of our much-valued volunteers. Referrers have been informed of the change in service, so that they can source alternative support for their patients if needed, and those that used the Pick up and Deliver service most frequently have been offered support from the NHS England team to identify alternative forms of support.

The NHSCVR programme is just one part of a volunteering system that supports people’s health and care needs, and there are many local voluntary sector organisations that provide other forms of support. Whilst the NHSCVR service is ending, volunteers are being redirected to other National Health Service and voluntary sector organisations to ensure patients continue to be supported.

The NHS Volunteer recruitment portal is already available, with 70 health and care organisations advertising opportunities. As the service grows, every NHS or voluntary organisation in health will be able to post opportunities and recruit volunteers to support their local communities, with a full launch of the service planned for later this year.

In addition, there are over 72,000 volunteers who continue to support NHS trusts directly in over 300 different volunteer roles, which are unaffected by the closure of the NHSCVR.

The decision to close the NHSCVR was based on NHS England’s assessment that the programme was not delivering value for money. The Department will continue to work with NHS England colleagues following the closure of the programme to mitigate risks to national health volunteer resilience.