Quality Standards

Over the past eighteen months, Surrey vinvolved has been working to improve the quality, quantity and diversity of volunteering opportunities available to 16-25 year olds across Surrey. During this time, in partnership with over 180 voluntary and community organisations and with Surrey Volunteer Centre Network, we have helped to identify and create over 4,000 youth volunteering opportunities and placed 1,750 young people into these. Around half of the volunteers placed had never volunteered before, and many in this category have gone on to volunteer again after their first ‘positive’ experience.

Whilst these numbers are important and help define ‘quantity’, ‘quality’ of work is clearly just as important if there is to be any significant or lasting change in the culture of youth volunteering. This means that vinvolved volunteers, organisations and communities must all benefit from the youth volunteering experience, and that the project should reach as many young people as possible from all different backgrounds.

REACH
In order to ensure that we are all working to a common standard, all vinvolved teams across England are encouraged to work towards the ‘REACH’ quality standard for youth action agencies, administered by the national organisation Youth Action Network. Surrey Vinvolved achieved the REACH standard in May 2009.
 
This self-assessment framework covers the following twelve areas to ensure compliance to good practice in all dealings with young people: Mission and Aims, Support, Accessibility, Youth Participation, Induction and Progression, Reflection and Learning, Rights and Responsibilities, Recognition, Safety, Community Benefit, Diverse Action and Networking/Partnerships.

NVQ & Staff Training
Whilst ensuring that vinvolved staff are all trained in specific areas such as mental health awareness, dealing with vulnerable adults, health and safety issues and so on, we also encourage those that wish to do so to take NVQ Level 3 in Youth Work. One of our staff has already completed this and three others are currently working towards this accreditation.

Good Practice Workshops and Toolkit
We are keen to ensure that organisations that use youth volunteers also adopting the best possible standards in dealing with them, from recruitment to recognition. To this end we have run a series of good practice workshops entitled “Engaging Youth Volunteers” which have been attended by sixty representatives from forty-six voluntary organisations. These workshops are accompanied by reference hand-outs and to accompany them we have also developed a ‘Toolkit’ for organisations engaging youth volunteers.

V Awards
As far as volunteers are concerned, we encourage them to take part in the VAwards scheme because this offers an opportunity for them to reflect on their volunteering, and especially the impact it has had on their own personal development and on the community. The two main VAwards are the V50 (50 hours volunteering) and the VImpact (100 hours volunteering) and these offer real value as evidence of a young person’s commitment to their volunteering to prospective employers and further education establishments alike.

Hopefully, by these means, deliver quality as well as quantity in our drive to encourage more young people to become engaged in voluntary and community activities.