Volunteering as an Individual
Firstly, thank you. You are all doing amazing work and pulling together for the benefit of our community. There are a lot of wonderful people helping out during this time of need, and our top priority is to keep everyone safe and to help you, keep those around you safe and healthy too. With this in mind, we are sharing some resouces which we hope you will find useful?
If you are intending to volunteer through an established charity, there is a formal process that you will need to go through. Especially if your volunteering role brings you into contact with vunerable people or children. Because of this, you will need to undergo a enhanced DBS check. This is a simple safeguarding check to ensure that you have no previous convictions that would bar you from volunteering. We can help you through this as part of your registration process. However, if you already have a DBS in place, talk to us to see if we can place you using your exsisting check.
Below are some resources for you to look through so you have an understanding of what to expect and what will be expected of you when you volunteer. Our pared down Volunteer Handbook is fairly generic but can be used by volunteers to support such roles as shopping, collecting prescriptions, gardening, telephone befriending and more. We have also produced a number of short animinations on volunteering, including: Top Tips for Volunteering, Safeguarding and Telephone Befriending.
There are also many Facebook groups being set up across Barnet for grassroots neighbourhood support, including Mutual Aid and many Whatsapp groups. For these community groups there is no formal training but you may feel that you would like to have a little bit more knowledge and some general guidelines. If so? these resources will help.
Everyone has the right to live in safety and free from abuse and neglect. Our Safeguarding animination will help you understand the role you play in safeguarding others.
Please fill out our registration form here
Resources
Download the Volunteer Guidelines here
Watch Tips for Staying Safe While Volunteering here
Watch Telephone Befriending Top Tips here
Learn about Safeguarding here
Generic Risk Assessment is available here
Mutual Support Covid-19 Resources and Volunteer Information
Please feel free to use and share them as needed.
CommUNITY Barnet Basic guidelines to protect volunteers
It’s fantastic to see volunteers offering to help, but volunteers also need to protect themselves during Covid 19.
Please remember:
When helping neighbours please only offer to help for the tasks you feel comfortable doing and are able to do. Volunteers helping local neighbours need to make sure that if they become unwell themselves they MUST not volunteer. Volunteers need to protect themselves and not put other people at risk.
If you can't physically volunteer, there are still some things that you could get involved with:
Lastly, thank you all again for being so amazing.
The CommUNITY Barnet Team