Volunteering action plan

Scotland’s volunteering action plan aims to create a Scotland where everyone can volunteer, more often, and throughout their lives. Designed to provide actions over a 10‐year period as a living plan. It seeks to raise the profile of volunteering and its impact on society.


Policy impact

While the profile of volunteering has increased significantly in the last decade, it continues to be under-represented within public policy.

The strategic significance and impact of volunteering is evident, however there is work to do to increase its visibility in the policy sphere. There's limited recognition of volunteering in key areas such as employment, community development and the environment, despite there being high levels of volunteering activity. By embedding volunteering more clearly across these and other policy portfolios, the impacts of volunteering can be greatly increased.

The National Performance Framework (NPF) offers a clear, shared platform for policy development. However, the limited understanding of volunteering's value (for individuals, communities and society) is a barrier to policy-maker engagement. Failure to harness the strategic value of volunteering effectively reduces the potential for achieving Scotland's National Outcomes.

By developing a suite of policy actions to be shared across all relevant policy areas, partners and decision-makers, we can ensure that volunteering is properly valued and reflected across public policy.

Policy Actions

1. Responsibility for Volunteering Policy through government-wide performance indicators; a cross-government group on volunteering, hosted by the Third Sector Unit; and volunteering inclusive policy analysis.

2. Local volunteering strategies will be developed by Community Planning Partnerships, supported by local Third Sector Interfaces, local authorities and COSLA.

3. Volunteering Values statement that reflects Stakeholders' views (Volunteer Scotland, SCVO, COSLA, Scottish Government, Chambers, Trade Unions, NHS Scotland and Funders) on volunteering and supports national and global initiatives in this area.

4. Organising for policy success through a Policy Champions Network, developed and supported by the Scottish Government and Volunteer Scotland, with representation from across the volunteering sector.

5. Planning and reviewing policy impact through a comprehensive policy review calendar to support timely inputs and implementation of a 'test of change' approach for reviewing a key policy area.

6. Providing agency to volunteers through influencing how volunteering is represented in the practical application of policy, for example the recent work around Work Capability Assessments. This will ensure (potential) volunteers can fully participate and engage.

Contact

Email: C19-volunteering@gov.scot

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