Volunteers' Week spotlight: Crisis Response Volunteer Richard
Volunteers' Week spotlight: Crisis Response Volunteer Richard
04 June 2020
How long have you been volunteering? (both as Crisis Volunteer and Patient Activities Volunteer?
As a Crisis Volunteer from the first week it swung into action. As a Patient Activities Volunteer around 3 and half years.
What made you decide to join as a Crisis Volunteer?
Wanted to help in any way possible and given I had already had DBS clearance thought if people were needed quickly this would also be of benefit to the Charity and Trust
What are your main duties as a Crisis Volunteer?
2-fold. Firstly in the shop where all staff in the hospital have access to food, drinks and other items (Dettol, toiletries, etc) at no cost to them. Here it involves stocking, signing people in and ensuring other things such as no more than 2 staff are in the shop at one time. Secondly there is receiving from the delivery bay hot and cold meals for staff. These are then sorted to then take the required amounts to staff on the wards, predominately the wards caring for persons with the Coronovirus, although clearly not actually setting foot on the wards ourselves.
What have you learned while volunteering?
How amazing quickly, efficiently and purposefully both the Trust and Charity have re-rolled the hospital and volunteer capabilities respectively.
What kind of response have you seen from staff?
Very happy and grateful to be able to either be delivered food to the wards or choose items from the shop
What do you do outside of volunteering?
Try to do as much hill walking as possible with London's somewhat limited range of hills taking me to places like the Lake District, Skye and the Peak District
If you were on a desert island, what disc, book and food would you bring?
Disc - Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms, book - The Tattooist of Auschwitz, food - Millionaire Shortbread (the higher the proportion of Caramel the better!)
A huge congratulations to Richard for receiving an Aspirational Make a Difference Award at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, to celebrate all of his work as a dedicated and committed volunteer over the last few years!
