This campaign has now closed
To expand our volunteer network which enables people with rheumatoid arthritis to support others with the disease by providing peer to peer support on the telephone and through the establishment of local groups.
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The volunteer network service is run by two full time staff. Health professionals refer patients direct to the service and we also tell callers to our helpline about the network and they will often ask if they can speak to a volunteer following help given on our helpline. We match people as closely as possible by age, sex, background and experience of living with RA. Our volunteers work with us in increasingly different and wide ranging ways. By establishing local NRAS groups volunteers can empower patient decision making, encourage self help and offer mutual support. This in turn creates awareness of the disease through leaflet distribution, posters and brochures in local hospitals, doctors surgeries and local libraries. Our volunteer groups work closely with local rheumatology teams, hospitals and primary care trusts. We now need to bring in necessary funding to further develop the work that has been so successful to date, with greater emphasis on retention, development and training of existing volunteers and further training programmes to deliver training in different ways working closely with rheumatology health professionals who already run patient education programmes in their units. We have begun a process of recruiting regional and area coordinators to effectively manage groups of volunteers in areas by starting NRAS groups with the help and support of NRAS and the local rheumatology team. We would also like to include a focus on the development of a toolkit for regional and area volunteer coordinators to enable them to further develop support groups and activities in local areas.