The Health Lab is pleased to publish its final output from the Helping in Hospitals programme: ‘Helping in Hospitals - a guide to high impact volunteering in hospitals.’ The guide was created with contributions from the Helping in Hospitals project teams, their volunteers and staff, and from patients and families.

The Helping in Hospitals programme was founded on the belief of people powered health and our collective ability to work alongside public services to make meaningful contributions to the way our NHS services are provided. The programme builds on the great work that is already happening in hospitals with volunteers.

With the support of the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health, Nesta has worked with ten hospital trusts from 2014 to 2016 to help them be more strategic with volunteering services, by creating impact roles that contribute to better patient experience, wellbeing and care and measuring impact more systematically.

The evidence generated through the programme has shown promising results related to improvements in patient experience, mood, anxiety levels, nutrition and hydration, and releasing nurse time to care. The full evaluation results, written by The Social Innovation Partnership (TSIP), can be found in: 'Measuring the Impact of Helping in Hospitals - The final evaluation report'.

The 'Helping in Hospitals - a guide to high impact volunteering in hospitals’ explains, in detail, how the projects achieved these outcomes and navigated their experiences. It covers the key steps in creating and running an impact volunteering programme. We hope that this guide, alongside the other excellent resources available and referenced throughout the guide, will encourage others to build impact volunteering programmes across the country.

For any questions on the Helping in Hospitals programme or the guide, please email [email protected]