The following National Ambulance Volunteering Dashboard has been developed by AACE in partnership with ambulance trusts. It is designed to highlight the range of individuals who support ambulance services, the activities in which they participate, and the patients they help via clinical and non-clinical volunteering opportunities.
This strategy supports NHS England’s work to establish mandatory data collection in relation to volunteer activity across the health sector.
This dashboard is a work in progress. Different ambulance trusts capture and record data differently. As a result, the level of detail will vary across the different measures included in this document. However, as the number of participating trusts increases, so will the level of detail, adding to our understanding of the importance of volunteers’ contributions throughout the sector.
We would like to thank EEAST, SWASFT, NEAS, YAS, SECAmb and NWAS services for contributing data.
We would welcome involvement from more trusts so that we can create a comprehensive national dataset that can help inform decision-making and drive innovation.
Please also note: this tool does not attempt to capture the entire volunteer experience or portray a comprehensive or “complete” record of volunteering impact on patients and ambulance services. Rather, it is a data-driven tool which aims to analyse the activities of Community First Responders (CFRs) and volunteer drivers, which are the two biggest areas of volunteering in the ambulance service. There are more volunteering roles. And the value and impact of volunteering goes far beyond response times and performance metrics. As this tool develops, we hope to include more case studies and other areas of volunteering, to help capture the qualitative impact that volunteers make on the lives of their communities and the patients that we serve.
We have also developed a Summary Volunteering Dashboard which outlines the size of the volunteering contribution to the ambulance service across the UK. It will be updated quarterly. This is in addition to the more in-depth dashboard also displayed above on this page.
Volunteering looks different at each trust and this dashboard is not intended as a comparative tool between trusts. Different trusts have different size teams, differing priorities, resources, demographics, and population sizes.
What unites trusts is that volunteering is more than a “nice to have”. It is a highly professional service, and volunteers are a vital part of the ambulance team.
We are now inviting trusts to participate in a more in-depth iteration of the dashboard, which will include deeper analysis and more insights. If you’re interested in getting your trust involved contact National Ambulance Volunteer Lead joe.crook@aace.org.uk
View our current national volunteering strategy here.
View our strategy on a page (phase 1, January 2023) here.
View additional ambulance volunteering resources here.
