There are two things I remember
best about last week and they are connected by the word honorificabiltuinitatibus*.
I will leave you to work out why, but here is a clue. One was hearing the first
cuckoo of the year and the other was our celebration of Volunteers’ Week, more
of which later. That cuckoo? Last Sunday J and I were walking up Clough Pike,
(a great Lancashire walk and one I would recommend doing for the spectacular
views, if you are ever up here) when we heard the distinctive call of a cuckoo.
It is unmistakeable. Nevertheless, J pulled out her phone, turned on her
‘Identify that Bird’ app, and took a quick recording. A short while later, and
the app duly reported that it was 100% sure it was indeed the Common Cuckoo.
Now I’m not sure we needed the app, but J is on a steep learning curve when it
comes to identifying birds by their song. The problem with doing this is that
you have to stop when you hear a bird singing, record their song and wait for
the analysis to come through. Often the bird, whose song you have heard, stops
singing just as your try to record it. Some of our walks can be like travelling
on the M6 on a Bank Holiday Monday, stop, start, take a few steps, stop, start
and so on. Not that I mind, I love J and I love being outside walking and try
to do so as much as possible.
Walking and being outside always
feels like a good use of my time. I think when I walk, I exercise when I walk,
and get to see many new places in different ways when I walk. I like the fact
that when we get lost on our walks (which frequently happens), it’s not seen as
a waste of our time, but just more steps.
I had been given citations for
each volunteer, which I turned into a ‘This is Your Life’ type presentation for
each person (younger readers of this blog ask your parents about the ‘big red
book’). It was great fun and there was much laughter, smiles and even a tear or
two. We had scones (cream or jam first depending on your personal preference)
and a warming cuppa, and for a while we could forget about the challenges of
the past 15 months.
Many of the volunteers had to
stay away from the hospital as the pandemic took hold and restrictions and shielding
became necessary. Friday marked the beginning of a return to the hospital for
some of these volunteers. They can’t as yet go onto the wards, but have started
to become ‘guides’ once more for patients, relatives and visitors to the
hospital. Given the many corridors, confusing signposting and natural anxiety that
many folk have when coming into hospital, this is a vital service. And if you can’t
remember which of the many car parks you have parked your car in, they will
happily help you find it too.
Whilst locally the pandemic brought
about a reduction in the number of volunteers at the hospital, nationally,
there was a huge response in the numbers of people who wanted to give some of their
time to help those unable to help themselves during the lockdown. In March last
year, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care went on TV to ask for
some 250,000 people to become volunteers to help the NHS. The response was
overwhelming. Some 750,000 people came forward during the first pandemic lockdown.
They picked up prescriptions, phoned those who may have been struggling with loneliness,
collected and delivered shopping, and completed a myriad of other acts of
kindness. During the early months of the pandemic some 10 million people
provided help to others by volunteering. A survey undertaken by Legal and
General in May 2020, calculated that the time given by this army of volunteers
was estimated to have the equivalent economic value of more than £350 million a
week.
Volunteers have taken on new
roles as the response to the pandemic changed. Our politicians may claim the
credit for the successful vaccination programme, but the reality is it would
have been nowhere without the efforts of the many volunteers who acted as
guides, marshals, and clerical and administrative staff. It has often been the
volunteers, who at a neighbourhood level have helped overcome vaccination hesitancy.
Likewise, our GPs stepped up and converted practice and health centres into
mini vaccination hubs, staffed and supported by volunteers, often retired
doctors and nurses too.
But it’s not just the response to
the immediacy of need that has been so impressive. Many of those volunteers who
responded to Matt Hancock’s call have stayed around. I think it may well be
what they found in those early days of volunteering. The loneliness, anxiety, frailty,
poverty and other vulnerabilities they will have encountered weren’t caused by
the pandemic. The social determinants that resulted in these outcomes have been
known for a long time and sadly have not been addressed. We are still awaiting
the publication of the ‘oven-ready plan’ for tackling the issues of social care,
and the pandemic has certainly brought these into sharp relief.
Whilst last Friday we were
celebrating the many years of volunteering that people had gifted to the hospital,
what I find very encouraging is that there is now a new breed of volunteer.
They are the so-called millennials. Folk aged between 20 and 30. They were the
group least likely to volunteer. When they did so however, they gave the most
time - up to 4 hours a week, sometimes much more. This bodes well for the
future of volunteering, and the impact volunteers have in so many ways on so
many peoples’ lives. We lost the labours that so many loved to give in helping
others before the pandemic, but we are slowly finding new ways that volunteers
can continue to once more be there with and help others. That’s something to
celebrate indeed!
*its literal meaning is ‘a
state of being able to receive honours’ - I use it tweaked to mean ‘you deserve to be
honoured’ – it appears in Shakespeare’s play ‘Love Labours Lost’, which also
features both an Owl and a Cuckoo
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