Shadow Social Justice Minister and North Wales MS Mark Isherwood has paid tribute to volunteers, highlighting “the fantastic contribution they make to our communities” and called for more support for voluntary organisations who are “facing real challenges”.
Responding in the Chamber to yesterday’s Statement by the Minister for Social Justice and Chief Whip: ‘Celebrating Volunteers’, Mr Isherwood said that in 2019-20, 26 per cent of people in Wales volunteered, but stressed that “voluntary sector organisations who help some of the most vulnerable people in our communities are now facing real challenges to recruit and retain the volunteers that are their lifeblood”.
Mr Isherwood, who himself first became a formal volunteer over 30 years ago, said:
“I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to celebrate volunteers ahead of Volunteers’ Week, held on 1 to 7 June each year. Volunteers Week is a chance to recognise the fantastic contribution that volunteers make to our communities and to say 'thank you', supported and celebrated by both grassroots organisations at the heart of every community and larger, household-name Charities.
“As you state, however, ‘the voluntary sector organisations who help some of the most vulnerable people in our communities are now facing real challenges to recruit and retain the volunteers that are their lifeblood, and this comes at a time of increasing demand for their services. Furthermore, these organisations are facing the increased costs that are affecting all businesses’, adding that you have established a Volunteering Leadership Group to better understand and support the future of volunteering.
“What consideration, therefore, will this Group give to the core and recurrent issue the voluntary sector has been highlighting at least throughout the past two decades, namely that although they provide a fence at the top of the cliff, rather than an ambulance at the bottom, delivering services that save the public sector millions, they lack sustainable statutory funding?
“Further, how will the Group address the ongoing concern expressed across the Voluntary Sector that, despite Welsh Government legislation, they are still being denied proper involvement in the design, delivery and monitoring of local and regional services?
“Many of these services, delivered by the voluntary sector, are funded by the Welsh Government's Housing Support Grant. How do you respond to the sector, who have described the Welsh Government's freeze in the Housing Support Grant this year as 'devastating' for service users, staff and volunteers? Why have cuts or freezes in the Housing Support Grant been announced almost as a sacrificial offering in successive Welsh Government budgets, year after year, despite the consequences of increased pressure on the NHS, Accident and Emergency Departments, and blue-light services? Why is the Welsh Government pursuing such false economies across the sector, when it should instead be removing the millions of pounds of added cost pressure on statutory services that they cause?
“The same applies to numerous other community bodies reliant on volunteers, including our Hospices, which continue to receive the lowest level of statutory funding in the UK, despite the increasing cost-of-living pressures on their vital end-of-life care provision.”