So, you have your policies and procedures in place, all of your staff are on board and you have been out and proactively recruited volunteers with additional support needs.

So what next?

This may be where you need to get creative.

Supported Volunteering refers to schemes where volunteers receive additional support in order to carry out their volunteer roles.

A volunteer may require extra support for a variety of reasons. For instance, they could:

- be lacking in confidence after a long period of unemployment
- have physical disabilities or health conditions
- have learning disabilities
- have mental health issues
- be homeless
- be striving to break patterns of negative behaviour, such as gambling or drug misuse
- be a non-English speaker

The 10th October 2010 (10/10/10) is World Mental Health Day.

This is a day, celebrated around the world, to talk openly about mental health, raise public awareness and try to challenge some of the stigma and misinformation around mental health conditions.

In the U.K, a number of organizations are organizing events to celebrate.

In order to widen the diversity of your volunteer pool and attract volunteers with additional support needs, your recruitment will need to be proactive.

How are these new volunteers going to know about your supportive practices? How are they going to know about the opportunities available to them? This is where proactive recruitment will be needed. A good volunteer involving organisation will reach out to those volunteers who would not normally be engaging with your organization.

So, you have thought about Awareness and you have thought about accessible formats for your policies and procedures. So what comes next?

Before you begin your recruitment, you will need to know how to structure that process and what policies and procedures you will need in place.

In order to successfully recruit and support volunteers with support needs, there needs to be some planning before the recruitment process takes place. This planning is needed to ensure that your organization is accessible and ready to take on volunteers with additional support needs.

I remember a time when I was scared to meet new people, afraid of letting them down. I could not commit to anything for the same reason. I was desperate to do something but didn’t know how I could given the state of my mental health. I was never sure how I would be one day to the next and finding someone who understood that would be very difficult.

One of the most important things to consider when moving into the area of supported volunteering, is how to create a supportive and inclusive environment for those volunteers with traditional barriers to volunteering.

There are two key messages to remember here:

1. Keep it simple
2. Be flexible

Supporting someone with a mental health issue as a volunteer is not so different to good practice in all volunteer management. The following tips were put together through Capital Volunteering a London wide project that has now closed led by CSV and the London Development Centre. Do provide access to information around benefits, often people are on disability benefits and a move into volunteering can cause anxiety around this. Do build links with employment and training providers that might help people with training and support [...]

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