Simon Williams, Director of Community and Housing, introduced the report and welcomed the Commission’s continued interest which is adding impetus to volunteering work. He provided a summary of recent volunteering initiatives by each of the council departments:

Environment and Regeneration

·         Dig Merton

·         Street Champions

Community and Housing

·         Neighbour to Neighbour – puts people in touch with each other to provide support in an informal way – exploring synergies between this scheme, street champions and neighbourhood watch

·         Out and About – volunteers take people with learning disabilities out to an activity that they both enjoy

·         Age UK – volunteers visit selected care homes to assess the quality of care and make recommendations for improvement

·         Merton Memories Project relied heavily on support from volunteers

Children, Schools and Families

·         Volunteering networks have been set up in a number of primary schools including Morden, The Priory, Merton Park, St Peter and St Pauls.

Corporate Services

·         Financial Capability – volunteers to help people manage their money – being piloted in May/June

·         Customer Contact project – exploring ways in which volunteers can support this project in the longer term

Simon Williams welcomed the suggestions made by a member of the Commission for the involvement of other groups in some of the projects. In response to a question he said that the Council had arranged for DBS checks to be carried out at reduced cost for voluntary sector organisations. Also, once volunteers are registered with the DBS update service, they can give a reference number to organisations so they can check the DBS information, again reducing cost.

Members commented and asked questions about progress on some of the task group’s recommendations set out in the appendix to the report:

Recommendation 5

A member challenged the response and asked if a “light touch” way could be found to implement the recommendation so that volunteers making a significant contribution to council services could receive reduced prices for some library and leisure services. Simon Williams said that administrative costs would be incurred in measuring a “significant contribution”. Hayley James added the ongoing monitoring of who is still volunteering to be entitled to the incentive would incur an administration cost also.  Simon Williams will be taking a report to the Council’s Management Team (CMT) suggesting that a volunteer recognition certificate could be issued (at a total cost of £1000), to coincide with National Volunteers’ Week as a first step towards what incentives might be offered.

Recommendation 7

In response to a question, Hayley James (Merton Voluntary Service Council) said that those volunteers who already used social media were generally happy to use it to talk about their volunteering and those who didn’t use it chose not to do so.

Recommendation 11

A member asked how easy it is to get information published in My Merton. Simon Williams said that editorial space is limited and is “hard fought for”. He will be asking CMT to identify the promotion of volunteer opportunities as a priority for editorial space. He confirmed that, if editorial space was provided, it would be free of charge.

In response to a question about the merger of Merton Voluntary Service Council and Volunteer Centre Merton, Simon Williams said that the trustees of both organisations are fully committed and see the benefits of the merger. It is on track to be completed by the end of June.

The Chair thanked Simon Williams and Hayley James for the updates and said that the Commission was keen to see the project continuing to make progress and would provide whatever support it could.