On Day Three of Celebrating Community Services Week, we're proud to release a short film made by young volunteers to support the work of our school-age immunisation team.

Children and young people from across the West Midlands have written and starred in a new video project to boost vaccination take-up.

As part of the national Volunteering for Health initiative, students teamed up with immunisation nurses and the patient experience team from Birmingham Community Healthcare for a project to create a short film and promotional poster addressing barriers and misconceptions that lead to lower take-up of vaccinations offered in schools as part of the national routine immunisation programme .

Around 25 young volunteers, aged 11-18, attended two sessions at Birmingham Community Healthcare's trust headquarters in Aston to learn about the importance of being vaccinated against illnesses such as human papillomavirus (HPV) in Year 9 (age 13-14), and the three-in-one teenage booster protecting against tetanus, diphtheria and polio.

Watch the video

Through two days of workshops, the group ultimately generated enough ideas to produce three extra vaccine-specific films, in addition to their main production, Immunity in the Community .

School-aged immunisation service manager Yasmin Shakeel said: “There is reduced vaccine rate nationally for all programmes and our aim is to increase uptake of school age immunisations by a minimum of 10 per cent.

“Research suggests that parents and young people like information delivered by health professionals in their language; so we plan to make the video this group of young people have helped create available in five commonly spoken languages, as well as English.

“The video and posters will be used in schools and by other service providers for children and young people to enhance the knowledge of immunisations and improve uptake.”

Yasmin added that the BCHC immunisation team has also issued schools with a question and answers booklet to help young people and parents find out more about immunisations, which is also being translated into other languages.

Volunteering for Health youth programme development lead Amy Maclean said: “ This is a great start to a partnership between Birmingham Voluntary Service Council (BVSC) , the lead partner for this programme, and NHS organisations in Birmingham and Solihull.

“It was wonderful to see those happy, proud faces as they got engaged with the project and saw the importance of the messages we want to convey.”

Amy added that BVSC is discussing developing further volunteering projects with BCHC Charity .

“It's really helpful for all of us to be able to give back to our communities and make people more aware of what immunisations they are able to get and what's happening to their body when they get vaccinated.”

Blessing Karunwi (aged 14)

“There are a lot of myths that need debunking about immunisation and a lot of people don't know how important it can be to protect against illnesses. This project shows the benefits of building connections and sharing ideas and information.”

Arham Basit (aged 16)

Volunteering for Health

Volunteering for Health is a £10 million national programme to show how volunteering can and must be a vital part of delivering health and social care now and in the future.

It aims to recognise the significant untapped potential for volunteering to enhance service delivery, improve patient and staff experience and boost routes into the health and care workforce.

The three-year programme is being delivered in partnership between NHS England, NHS Charities Together and CW+, the official charity of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Organisations across the country were invited to bid for funding for their volunteering projects and 15 successful grantees and been awarded between £285,000 and £550,000. The projects vary in scale and approach but will help to tackle barriers to volunteering in health care, test new ways of working and develop guidance and best practice that can be shared across the NHS and beyond. The final 15 projects themselves represent our diverse communities and offer varied ambitions about what volunteers can help us achieve.

Volunteering for Health is part of NHS England's response to the recommendations from the NHS Volunteering Taskforce report. The Taskforce brought together leaders from across the NHS, government and the voluntary sector to develop a five-year vision for NHS volunteering. They analysed the issues and recommended changes to accelerate volunteering in the NHS.

Volunteering for Health will gather insight throughout the duration of the programme to enable projects to learn from each other, raise the profile of the work and enable influencing at a national and local policy level.

This blog was written and published by Birmingham Community Healthcare Trust on 24 September 2025. Immunity in the Community! | Our News | Website

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