Volunteering in Community Learning and Development
4 Supporting volunteers in practice
Regular support from a named support person, pro forma for support and reflection on practice, good practice guidance on supporting your volunteers and becoming Volunteer Friendly
Support and supervision
In the way that every paid employee has a line manager, a CLD volunteer should have a named support person and be advised about the nature and frequency of that support, along with information about professional learning opportunities available to them.
Here are some examples of different processes and pro forma used for support and supervision within the CLD Service of Inverclyde Council.
They include:
Ongoing support for literacies and ESOL volunteer tutor assistants
- Session visits by named support worker
- Ongoing support through meetings and e-mail communication
- Training and development – review of needs, workshops and accreditation
- Impact statements from learners and volunteers
Pro forma used at individual and group support meetings
- Opportunity to reflect on successes and to raise issues
- Record on training undertaken and impact on practice
- Assessment of future training needs
- Checklist of tasks/actions
Contribution to the development of provision
- Learning and teaching approaches
- Use of resources and ICT
- Learners’ progress towards their goals
- Training undertaken and benefits
- Training needs and further actions
https://www.i-develop-cld.org.uk/pluginfile.php/7022/mod_page/content/14/InvVolunteerReflection.doc
Ongoing Support
Volunteer Scotland’s good practice guide Supporting your volunteers is a useful tool when developing your support arrangements. This covers;
- What do we mean by support and why is support important?
- Things to consider when planning support for volunteer
Volunteer Friendly Award
The Volunteer Friendly Award is a simple, user-friendly quality standard designed by Volunteer Dundee to support, recognise and reward groups who are good at involving volunteers. It helps you to take a systematic look at what you do and how you do it.
Volunteer Friendly involves working through a checklist of best practice, organised into five strands. This produces an action plan to help you to develop a portfolio of evidence showing the quality of your work with volunteers.