MVAP has a comprehensive recruitment, selection, advice work training and support programme to enable volunteers to gain the skills and confidence needed to carry out a range of advice work roles. This programme has been developed and refined over the life of the MVAP project, including a review following the Covid-19 pandemic.
The precise nature of the advice work done by volunteers varies between partners according to need and partner’s procedures. The project intentionally seeks to attract people to volunteer who may not have the usual profile of advice work volunteers, or feel they have the skills and experience required, and to address barriers to them volunteering. This includes people with lived experience of the issues partners address, including seeking asylum, mental health, homelessness and poverty.
Publicity material for MVAP is widely circulated among a network of organisations and places (including community cafes, GP surgeries and charities, as well as online). The recruitment process includes information sessions and an informal interview with the volunteer development worker. The project does not require any prior qualifications or experience, but volunteers do need to live in the City of Manchester, have good written and spoken English, and be reasonably digitally literate. Where a volunteer shows sufficient aptitude but does not have quite the level of English or digital skills, they are supported by the inclusion support worker.
Access to Advice Course
The formal training takes place over nine one-day sessions (one per week). The first four sessions cover areas such as the role of advice; safeguarding and confidentiality; empathy and listening skills, and good interview practice. After this, the volunteers are allocated to their placement agency – usually a partner agency – and they start attending for a minimum of half a day per week. In parallel they receive training for the remaining five weeks on welfare benefits, debt, and housing.
In the later stages of this funding, the project has also identified other partner agencies – Rainbow Haven, Booth Centre and Barnabus – who provide volunteer placements. This has been a necessary development to ensure volunteers have access to placement, when the core partners have no further capacity.
Volunteers are assigned a partner by the volunteer development worker, the choice is led by the prospective volunteer’s wishes, but takes into account other factors such as capacity of a particular partner to absorb new volunteers and proximity to the volunteer’s home address. In practice, a number of volunteers choose a partner based on previous experience: for example, people who have experienced the asylum system from the inside tend to choose to volunteer with Manchester Refugee Support Network. It is also possible for volunteers to transfer from one partner to another, if this suits the needs both of the volunteer, and of the partners concerned.
Volunteers receive a certificate for completing the training at award ceremonies. Once the initial training is complete, the project provides day-to-day supervision by partner advice supervisors, and on-going support and training. The expectation of MVAP is that volunteers will have a 6 month placement. MVAP provides references for established volunteers who are applying for jobs.
The volunteer training is also offered to other voluntary organisations in Manchester that are struggling to deliver generalist advice to Manchester communities and have volunteers who would benefit from the MVAP programme.
Short Training Courses
The MVAP project delivers a range of short courses, which are available to MVAP volunteers as well as partners’ staff and other voluntary organisations.
These are on relevant advice topics, and include: Immigration, Personal Independence Payments (PIP), Work Capability Assessments, Housing Options, Homelessness Prevention and State Pension Age Benefits.
Understanding the System Course
This is a half or two half days course that MVAP delivers to voluntary organisations who do not have advice as their main focus, but are reaching people on the edge of the advice sector, and are the first point of contact for many people who may need support. It is available as an open access course or bespoke to a particular agency.
