Helpforce volunteers make a difference: the heart behind healthcare 

Image © Helpforce
_{In UK hospitals, community settings, and patients’ homes, the help of volunteers is vital.}

While most 16-year-olds were preoccupied with friendships or exams, Freya already had her focus trained on a career in healthcare – and her heart set on volunteering.  

Thanks to a supportive volunteer programme at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool in the north of England, she was able to gain work experience in a real hospital setting. “I went from being in school to suddenly being in a hospital environment, seeing what patients and families go through,” Freya says.  

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Freya was even busier, helping on wards and in the emergency department, supporting families and covering for fellow volunteers when needed. “Volunteers were more important than ever,” she says. “We became an extra set of hands when staffing was stretched. It felt good to be genuinely useful.” 

Within UK hospitals, community settings, and patients’ homes, volunteers like Freya are vital. With the right training, they take on non-clinical tasks such as ward housekeeping, delivering samples and equipment, helping patients eat and drink, and supporting rehab physio exercises. This eases pressure on healthcare professionals and frees up their stretched time to deliver the clinical procedures for which they’re trained, all while giving patients the extra care that can transform their recovery and long-term wellbeing. 

Helpforce is a UK charity that supports NHS trusts and community organisations to grow and nurture their own volunteering programmes. It considers volunteering to be key to improving health outcomes. “At our core, we’re about ensuring that volunteers are integral to healthcare being its very best,” says the chief executive Amerjit Chohan.  

“Our first step is to find out about the challenges that healthcare organisations face. Once we understand their situation, we set about designing evidence-led volunteering solutions that enable services to thrive.” 

Together, Helpforce and its grantees design high-impact volunteering roles that complement clinical care and help patients get back to full health. Founded in 2017, the charity’s importance was turbocharged when COVID-19 hit. The pandemic was devastating to the delivery of free, universal healthcare by the NHS – increasing waiting lists, and leaving staff burned out. 

Between 2022 and 2025, Helpforce’s Back to Health (B2H) campaign worked with more than 100 organisations to create high-impact volunteering roles at scale in hospitals, communities, and patients’ homes.1 

It reached over 1 million people (910,954 patients and service users, 130,850 health and care staff, and 77,677 volunteers). Some 92 per cent of patients agreed that volunteers improved their sense of wellbeing, while 86 per cent of staff agreed volunteer support improved the quality of the care they provided.2  

As Freya got to know the Alder Hey teams, she came to feel like part of the family. Back at home, she even inspired her cousin and brother to get involved in volunteering. Today, she has completed her degree and is working as a paramedic full-time. She credits her volunteer experience with giving her an honest insight into the healthcare industry before she committed to going down that career path.  

“It felt like the perfect way to say thank you, but also to get a taste of the real work behind the scenes. It gave me a head start, confidence, and a network of people who believed in me,” she says.

Oak supports Helpforce through our Special Interest Programme, which provides our Trustees with space and flexibility to make grants outside of Oak’s other programme strategies.

References: 
_{1: Helpforce. Back to Health. Helpforce Community, n.d. Available at: helpforce.community/back-to health (Accessed 23 February 2026). 
2: Helpforce. Back to Health: Final Impact Report 2022–2025. Helpforce, 2025. Available at: storage.googleapis.com/ helpforce/B2H-final-report-5-1.pdf(Accessed 23 February 2026).}