By Joe Crook, National Volunteer Lead, AACE
Today is International Volunteer Day 2025 and AACE would like to take a moment to thank our incredible ambulance volunteers. There are over 7000 ambulance volunteers around the UK, many of whom are Community First Responders (CFRs) who attend 999 calls in their community and provide first aid in those vital minutes before an ambulance arrives.
AACE would also like to take a moment to appreciate the vital role that our volunteer leaders, managers and coordinators play. Most volunteers choose the ambulance service because they care deeply about their communities and want to make a difference.
However, the thing that keeps them volunteering year after year is that they feel safe, valued, cared for, and invested in. That is a 365-day a year job and our volunteering teams are at the heart of that.
I am lucky to work with many of them on a daily basis and am always inspired by their passion and dedication for making the ambulance volunteering experience the best it can be.
Ambulance volunteers help in so many ways, but here are a few:
- Ambulance volunteers are a vital part of the shift from treating people in hospitals to treating them at home. They are embedded in their communities. Working under remote clinical supervision, they can help keep a patient at home if they don’t require ambulance conveyance to hospital but may instead need an urgent GP appointment or other community-based care.
- Volunteers also help patients who have fallen, using their specialist skills and equipment and coordinating with clinicians to help people up if it is deemed safe to do so. This can help prevent long-lies which can add to further complications and hospital stays.
- Volunteers help patients attend their hospital appointments. They are particularly impactful with supporting cancer patients attend their regular oncology appointments and treatments.
- Volunteers play an especially important role during winter, as pressures mount on stretched services. Volunteers help to support patients and support quicker and more accurate decision-making which can ensure that ambulances are deployed to where they are needed most.
If you are interested in finding out more about ambulance volunteering, click here.
