A VAST Volunteering Case Study
Caudwell Children Achieves Gold!
Millions of people volunteer in some way every single year, and for many organisations, volunteers are the backbone of their operations. Without them, the number of people organisations support would fall significantly.
That’s why it’s important to support volunteers effectively from the very beginning, and to get volunteering policies, procedures, and processes right. The VAST Volunteering Quality Standards has been split into three levels: gold, silver, and bronze. It doesn’t just award good practices either. It’s a proactive, achievable, target-driven action plan based on where organisations are now and working together towards where they want to be – an effective action plan based on achievable targets and clear priorities.
One recent organisation that have achieved Gold is Caudwell Children. Their range of services for children and families are designed to remove some of the barriers that children face, enabling them to reach their full potential. From birth into early adulthood, they provide practical and emotional support for thousands of disabled and autistic children every year.
These services can include:
- Autism Services
- Equipment
- Short Breaks
- Workshops
- Employability Programme
- Family Support
- Treatment and Therapies
At Caudwell Children, they value everyone’s unique qualities. They offer flexible volunteering opportunities tailored to volunteers’ interests, whether in special needs or child services, to fit their schedule and enhance their CV.
Sian, Senior Project Officer, was able to support Caudwell Children through the process of completing the Awards. She was able to offer them 1:1 support to discuss different types of evidence and ideas on how to modernise certain parts of their processes.
Tom, Corporate Partnerships Manager, was able to use this feedback to update documentation and streamline certain processes. Once Tom had compiled his evidence, he was able to send it over to our Volunteering Team to be reviewed. We were able to check over all of the evidence and were delighted that Caudwell Children had achieved Gold.
At VAST, we are firm believers that there is always opportunity to improve volunteering opportunities, so we supported Caudwell Children to develop an action plan for their next steps. This focused on corporate volunteering, finalising the new and improved Volunteer Handbook and developing clear pathways for progression.
We were delighted to present their signed certificate to Laura Vyse, Volunteer Manager, at one of our Volunteer Manager Network meetings.
“We are delighted to achieve the Gold award for VAST Volunteer Quality Standard. It’s been great to use this framework to reviewing our current process, procedures and standards for volunteering. I would highly recommend this to all. We have a huge passion for Volunteering here at Caudwell Children where our services are highly dependable on volunteer support to achieve our goals. We are thrilled with our reflections and outcome of gold standards as we now look to sustain and develop our opportunities to volunteer here at the charity where all volunteers can reach their potential.”
