Newark Community First Aid seek volunteers as demand for services rise

A first-aid charity has launched an appeal for more volunteers as demand for its services continues to rise.

Newark Community First Aid needs help to cover events and run courses, as well as administration and other back-room tasks.

The charity worked through the pandemic providing shopping, medication deliveries and transport to hospital and GP appointments. It provided daily welfare calls to the county’s most vulnerable people on behalf of Nottinghamshire County Council and provided first aid cover at Newark Vaccination Centre.

Operations manager Philip Jessop said: “We restarted our workplace first aid training in July 2020 to find huge demand from businesses, schools, early years settings and the NHS. We are now running more than four times the number of courses than before the pandemic.

“This year, as government restrictions have eased, we have also restarted our free community training and demand for this is escalating by the week.”

The charity ran a major recruitment campaign in 2021, which saw 24 new volunteers join, with most now fully trained and operational.

Jonathan Brown, the charity’s events manager, said: “It is great to welcome our new volunteers and see them helping at events. It is events where we are seeing a huge rise in demand for our services.

“In 2020, with the pandemic at its height, we only covered 12% of the normal demand, this started to recover last year as restrictions were lifted from the end of May.

“This year though we see major events are returning like the Newark Garden Show in April, the County Show in May, the Radfest in June, East Midlands Chilli Festival and the Techfest music festival in July. Also, a huge number of new events such as the Land Rover show in May, events for the Queens Jubilee in June, the Kit Car Show in July and our volunteers out every day in August at a mass of events.

“This is combined with a reduction in the number of first aid event providers. Therefore, we need many more volunteers. I is very rewarding work, you make new friends, gain new skills and have the satisfaction of helping others.”

Newark Community First Aid is looking for people over 16, who can give some of their spare time to helping provide the charity’s key services.

To volunteer, or for more information, email newarkcommunityfirstaiders@hotmail.com or contact Philip on 07973 904808.

No previous experience is required as full training will be given.