Chemists’ Community Fund Volunteer Network Update
The May 2019 Networks Newsletter sees an update about the revised Chemists' Community Fund Volunteer Network Framework from Anna Dearden, the Chemists' Community Fund Manager. Contact Anna and the CCF team at ccfund@rsc.org with any comments or questions.Over the past year the Chemists’ Community Fund has been consulting with our volunteers to revise the volunteering roles that support the work of the Fund. The key areas that we considered were:
- the needs of our beneficiaries,
- the priorities for the Fund (including the main need to raise awareness on the breadth of support and services available),
- the practices of other benevolent funds, and
- general good practice in recruiting, supporting and training volunteers (including managing risks and meeting our legal requirements).
The revised Volunteer Network Framework is now in place:
The Local Coordinators will enable us to retain the important links that we have with each local section.The Ambassadors will link with the Local Coordinator to support us to raise awareness of the Fund locally; this role can include raising awareness of the Fund at events, helping with sending Christmas cards, and supporting wellbeing workshops or retirement planning workshops. The Visitor role is solely intended for undertaking visits to beneficiaries. We currently have 50 volunteer Visitors, 17 Ambassadors and 32 Local Coordinators and we are actively seeking more members to volunteer with us in the new Ambassador role to raise awareness of the Fund to RSC members. It’s important to note that these roles are not mutually exclusive and a member can be in multiple roles.To help our volunteers, we have developed distinct role descriptors and training resources for each role. In particular, each Visitor requires in-depth training and greater levels of support, due to the nature of the role and associated legal requirements. We are therefore limited in our capacity to provide this level of training for any volunteer who is not visiting beneficiaries.Three bespoke training and guidance sessions for 35 Visitors have been delivered so far in 2019, working with a specialist charity, the Befriending Networks, to provide these training sessions. This training supported the new structure covering issues of confidentiality, regulation, and behaviours, and feedback from those who attended has been very positive. Training for Ambassadors and Local Section Coordinators will now follow and this has been arranged for June 2019.The work that all of our volunteers undertake is vitally important to enable us to provide the support that we do. We are very appreciative of their continued involvement with the Fund, enabling us all to support our beneficiaries. If you have any questions or feedback on the volunteering roles, or are interested in joining us as a volunteer, please do let us know by emailing ccfund@rsc.org or call 01223 432 539. Anna Dearden, Chemists’ Community Fund ManagerMay 2019rsc.li/chemists-community-fund What else is the Chemists’ Community Fund up to?The Fund has recently partnered with the National Autistic Society, who have provided training for RSC Careers and CCF staff, and have recommended some books for us to purchase. In addition to the autism books, shown below, we have also purchased some titles on wellbeing. These are all available for any RSC member to request at any time from the library at Burlington House. 
We continue to have a busy schedule of wellbeing and resilience workshops, with 16 being held to date, welcoming a total of 226 Attendees, and five further dates have been organised for later this year. We have also finished our three pilot retirement workshops, with the 83 attendees all reporting excellent feedback. We have more events planned for 2019. If you would like to read more about our Retirement Workshops, please check out this article on the RSC website.If you would like to help organise a workshop local to you, or to receive further information on this initiative, then please do contact Lara Pocock in the Fund Office ccfund@rsc.org. If you would like to attend one of these workshops, they can be booked on the RSC website. We are also hosting a Building Personal Resilience webinar for all RSC members on Tuesday 14th May, which is part of our campaign for Mental Health Awareness Week. For more information about Chemists’ Community Fund activities, go to rsc.li/chemists-community-fund or email the team.
