Volunteer's point of view

Policy team engaging with day centre for older people

Volunteers with day centre staff and service users

"We are a new team looking at how the Government might fund social care in the future. We didn't know one another before, so in addition to making a contribution to our community through volunteering, this project helped us bond more as a team. We all found it motivating to do something more front-line than our day-to-day work and we learned a lot about how things work at a centre like this... how the centre is organised, how they involve people with dementia in social activities, the challenge of making the activities inclusive to everyone etc. It was also great to see staff take pride in their centre and the services they provide. It was such an inspiration to see how staff use a range of skills and work hard to provide a comfortable, safe, fun environment for older people, many of whom might live alone and really look forward to their visits to the centre. We found the experience very rewarding and loved talking, singing, dancing, playing and spending time with the older people who visit the centre regularly”