Make an impact with Volunteer Brum!

Across Birmingham, the NHS and the city’s many charities are working hard to support patients, families and communities. Volunteers continue to play an important role in that picture - as a valued part of the wider health and wellbeing system. Our Volunteering for Health page brings together a wide range of opportunities that contribute to: Patient support within NHS settings Community health and wellbeing initiatives Tackling loneliness and social isolation Promoting healthier lifestyles Supporting recovery and independence For organisations delivering health-related activity - whether alongside the NHS or in the community - this page provides a shared space to showcase opportunities and help residents find the right route in. Health volunteering is often a first step for people looking to gain experience, build skills or explore careers in health and care. Making these roles visible and easy to access benefits the whole system. If you’re speaking to prospective volunteers, partners or stakeholders, please consider directing them to the Volunteering for Health section on Volunteer Brum. It’s a practical way we can collectively strengthen Birmingham’s health and wellbeing offer. Find health opportunities on Volunteer Brum

Across Birmingham, everyday life is moving online - from keeping in touch with family to managing appointments, bills and services. For many older people and those living with long-term health conditions or disabilities, this shift can feel daunting and, at times, isolating. That’s where Digital Café Volunteers come in. Digital NNS works with Birmingham’s ten Neighbourhood Network Schemes , along with community groups, social prescribers and social workers, to build digital confidence where it’s needed most. The focus is simple but vital: making sure everyone has access to the digital tools, technology and services that many of us now take for granted. Turning this vision into reality are Digital Cafés - friendly, local drop-in sessions to be held in community spaces across the city. Volunteers sit down with residents, often over a cuppa, and help them make sense of their own devices, whether that’s a smartphone, tablet or laptop. No pressure. No jargon. Just patient, one-to-one help in a relaxed setting. Volunteering is flexible and fits around real life. You can give as much or as little time as you’re able, using skills you already have. There’s no formal training required, because if you can use your own phone or laptop, you already know enough. The help people ask for is often simple but hugely important, like freeing up storage, managing emails, unsubscribing from endless newsletters, downloading or deleting apps, or setting up video calls to speak with family and friends. Volunteers are not expected to deal with more specialist issues such as the NHS App or online safety around scams. Those areas are covered by Neighbourhood Network Scheme staff and other trained professionals. Your role is about the everyday frustrations that can stop people using their devices with confidence. As Rickie Josen, Digital NNS Community Lead , puts it: “The beauty of Digital Cafés is that if you can use a smartphone, you have the skills we need. No special training required — just pick a café near you and give an hour when it suits you. You’ll be helping people unlock new opportunities through digital skills, from accessing essential services online to reconnecting with loved ones. “What matters most isn’t technical expertise, but kindness, patience and the ability to listen . We’re looking for people who enjoy helping others, can explain things clearly and treat everyone with respect and good humour. There are no age limits, and people from all walks of life are encouraged to get involved.” If you’d like to make a real difference in your neighbourhood - helping people feel more confident, more connected and less alone in a digital world – Digital NNS would love to hear from you. Join Birmingham’s growing network of Digital Café Volunteers and be part of something genuinely worthwhile. Find out more about this opportunity

On Thursday 4 December, 35 young people aged 14-18 from across Birmingham came together with frontline NHS staff to explore how Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust collects and explains ethnicity data. The group was recruited by career coaches as part of the Volunteering for Health Programme. Building on ideas first explored in an earlier session in August, the focus was on how these conversations can feel safer, clearer and more supportive for patients, families and staff. The young people shared practical, creative ideas for improving how information is communicated, while staff helped ground these suggestions in day-to-day practice so they can genuinely shape future approaches. Ethnicity data is essential for understanding and reducing health inequalities. Without it, we cannot see whether changes in care are reaching the communities that experience the greatest disparities in health outcomes. The young people have helped identify clearer, more human and more meaningful ways to explain this, making sure families understand how sharing this information directly supports better, fairer care. Across the project, the young people developed a range of creative and practical ideas. These included: using text messages via the existing patient portal app to explain why the data is requested and why it matters short videos to be shown in waiting rooms or shared ahead of appointments a poster campaign, and a schools-based programme where students take a resource pack into their schools and run assemblies on health inequalities and data. Some of the students will be road-testing this approach. The third and final session on 16 December focused on developing these ideas further, and we’re particularly excited to be bringing the Trust’s communications team into the final phase. They will help shape the electronic and film-based outputs so they are engaging, accessible and ready for real-world use. We were also delighted to be joined by our Chief Nurse, Daljeet, who visited the group, shared her support, and passed on her compliments, recognising both the importance of this work and the value of young people leading change in how we communicate with families. This project is a powerful example of how youth voice, lived experience and creativity can strengthen how we tackle health inequalities in practice. We are excited for the final session in February, led by the communications team. Find out more about the Volunteering for Health Birmingham and Solihull Programme https://www.bvsc.org/volunteering-for-health