A new digital platform is being launched to boost NHS volunteer numbers in Scotland following a post-pandemic decline in people signing up to help local communities.
The ‘volunteer management system’ will work alongside a business transformation process within the NHS after numbers fell by half – from 6,000 to 3,000 – following the Covid outbreak.
The Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI) was commissioned by Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to ‘shape and drive the transformation through co-developing a new model of volunteering, to regenerate the service while broadening the scope of volunteering opportunities’. It is envisaged that the resulting NHS Scotland Volunteering Service will be underpinned by a ‘market-leading’ solution.
The platform, which will automate and streamline the volunteering processes, aims to help get numbers back up to the 6,000 level, contributing over one million hours annually.
Now entering the delivery stage of the project, other expected benefits include ‘volunteer self-service through digital engagement to build capacity in NHS Scotland Volunteering teams and robust data collection and impact measurements to assure continued investment in volunteering’.
Professor George Crooks OBE, chief executive of DHI, said: “Volunteering is vital to the NHS, but volunteer numbers halved to 3,000 since the Covid pandemic. To tackle this, NHS Scotland established – and is now delivering – a business transformation programme to reshape its volunteering service. With shifting age demographics altering traditional engagement models, this initiative will deliver a modern, scalable, and digitally-enabled volunteer service fit for the future.”
Dawn Fisher, of Healthcare Improvement Scotland, added: “The programme represents a timely and confident step change in NHS Scotland Volunteering, setting a path to a more scalable and sustainable service that offers more diversity of volunteering opportunities and new digital modes of engagement, which ultimately means more patients and families supported by volunteers, and better experiences of care and compassion across our health system.”
One person seeing the benefits of volunteering is Fleming McNiven. After spending 40 years sitting behind a desk as a chartered accountant, the desire to “give something back” took hold. The 63-year-old, now retired, started volunteering with St John’s Hospital in Livingston during Covid, where he works one morning a week in the outpatient department for ophthalmology, diabetes, and podiatry and another at the hospital’s main entrance reception.
He said: “I never really enjoyed my work, but one thing I really did enjoy was the sense of community of being with people in the office. And so, when I retired, I wanted to get out and be with people. Also, I wanted to keep the brain cells going but really, I wanted to give something back.”
He added: “I greet people as they come in, directing them if they’re vulnerable or nervous. I think it’s really good for them to see a friendly face. And when people are obviously distressed for any reason we can support them by sympathetically showing them where to go or just talking to them.
“I once took a lady up to the second floor in the hospital in the lift because she couldn’t use the stairs and was too scared to go in the lift on her own, so if I hadn’t been there, she would have missed her appointment. I know that’s very much appreciated because patients and visitors regularly come back to us to say thank you so much for helping them out.”
He said: “I also provide basic admin support to the nurses. I’m only there for a few hours a week, but they really do show appreciation and thank me.”
A key aim of the programme is also to expand its reach into new volunteer demographics. Fleming says he would like to see younger people get involved.
He added: “The young people I’ve been involved with who want to volunteer or who are maybe thinking of a career in the NHS get to see how the hospital works and meet the professionals to ask questions. So, I get to be an example to these young folk and that’s gratifying for me, because I’ve never really been involved in doing anything like that in my career.”
The programme is backed by the Scottish Government as part of its commitment to ‘societal development, civic engagement, and sustainable healthcare’. The economic value of NHS Scotland volunteering is projected to exceed £18 million over five years, reinforcing the social and economic importance of volunteering to the people and communities of Scotland
Neil Gray, Scottish health secretary, said: “Volunteers have played an important role in the health service for many years and the Scottish Government recognises and appreciates the contribution they make.
“The new Volunteer Management System will help to make the process of recruiting volunteers more efficient and will help us to create volunteering opportunities that are flexible and responsive to the needs of NHS Scotland. I am particularly keen that we make volunteering available to a wider demographic of people, so that more people who would like to volunteer are able to do so.”
DHI is not-for-profit organisation established in 2013. On its website, it is described as a ‘world-leading collaboration between the University of Strathclyde and Glasgow School of Art, publicly funded by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and the Scottish Government’.
It worked in collaboration with HIS to use ‘design innovation’ to develop a new business and operating model for volunteering, setting out an efficient, sustainable, national approach to the volunteering lifecycle.
Bill Kendall, lead consultant at the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre, said: “This collaborative project represents a transformational shift in NHS Scotland Volunteering to provide more and higher quality opportunities for people to give their time freely to support others, ‘giving back’ to society and improving their well-being.
“Working together with NHS HIS, the volunteer management community and Scottish Government, we are transforming the service to a new, more scalable and flexible model, showcasing how business and digital change can deliver meaningful change for patients, volunteers and staff, and for our society.”
The refreshed service and VMS digital toolset are being rolled out during 2025, with all health boards fully transitioned by May 2026.
