For Volunteers Week, this week our leadership message comes from Jo Baker and Catherine Jowitt

Jo writes:

“Volunteering has been threaded through my life from a young age. It has played a significant role in shaping the trajectory of my life – not just my working life, but fundamentally who I am – my values, behaviours, and my understanding of the world around me. 

From volunteering in different local charities focused on children, women, disability, human rights, to street theatre, being a trustee, volunteering in a children's home (way back in the ‘70s) as well as a year volunteering overseas in my forties – it has been an enriching and fulfilling experience and one I hope will continue into my old age.

And now here in West Yorkshire, I have had the privilege to work with volunteering leads from across the system to build on some of the great work already happening in different sectors and organisations, through building collaboration at a system level. And this year we have been working hard to develop a West Yorkshire volunteering strategy, building on our West Yorkshire volunteering principles, and setting out the focus of our work for the next two years.

The strategy and three priority areas have been shaped with the input of stakeholders across the partnership, and through engagement sessions at place and at integrated care system (ICS) level. This includes volunteers themselves.

We are excited to share the strategy with you as we celebrate Volunteering Week in West Yorkshire. Our strategy and the supporting delivery plans reflect our commitment to work together to maximise the impact of volunteering across our system – both for our communities and our volunteers.”

And we are excited to have a new Chair of our West Yorkshire Integrated Volunteering Group, Catherine Jowitt, who writes:

“Like Jo, volunteering has been part of my life since being a teenager, from teaching young people to dance, to spending weeks at a disability respite holiday centre in Southport, and more recently as a trustee and chair for local charities. Volunteering has given me the opportunity to do things in areas of interest that I don’t get to do in my day job, whilst also gaining skills, knowledge and experience which are transferable into other areas of my working and personal life.

I have now worked directly with volunteers in the NHS for 16 years and in that time, I have seen huge transformation in the way volunteers are deployed, governed, valued and celebrated. Through improved data collection and evaluation of impact, we now have a far greater understanding of the critical role volunteers play as part of our health and care workforce.

I am proud that in West Yorkshire we have a passionate group of volunteer managers from across statutory and voluntary sector organisations. They represent the hundreds of volunteer managers in our system who have come together to ensure volunteering grows, develops and is recognised as essential in our future health and care system.”

In West Yorkshire we believe volunteering makes a critical contribution to health and care, building resilience and giving the people of West Yorkshire access to additional support and services. We know volunteering can be a route into employment for the economically inactive, part of an individual's recovery journey, or a way for individuals to ‘give something back’ and gain a sense of purpose and fulfilment.

So, as we celebrate Volunteering Week in 2025, we want to highlight some of the great work happening across West Yorkshire and say a big thank you to all our volunteers giving their time and energy to make a difference:

• Motunrayo’s volunteer story with Locala Health and Wellbeing.
• Marium’s volunteer story with Auntie Pam’s service for parents-to-be.
• Listen to a Young Volunteers Podcast featuring Alfie who volunteers in the A&E department at Dewsbury Hospital, Mariam who works in a library, and Finley and Estelle who are working as in-patient volunteers at the Kirkwood Hospice.
• Read Mahmuda’s story and Eunice’s story detailing their experience of Helpforce’s Volunteer to Career programme. Other volunteers talk about their experience of the initiative in this video.
• Talib Yaseen, Chief Nursing Officer at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, on volunteering in maternity services.
• Paul Curley, Chief Clinical Information Officer at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, on volunteering in chaplaincy.  
• Find out about the fantastic contribution that volunteers make at Airedale Hospital. From running the two hospital shops, to helping people find their way around and supporting the emergency department, Airedale’s volunteers provide vital support in the hospital.
• Read some successful volunteer stories from Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust: Nair’s story, Layla’s story, Kerry’s story, Phoebe’s story. 
• More volunteer stories from across Leeds can be found on the Doing Good Leeds - Volunteers of Leeds web page.