Volunteering and the Law
Failure to understand how legislation relates to volunteers could result in organisations facing legal action:
- With volunteers claiming employment rights
- Around failure to protect volunteers
- Around failure to provide training and support to ensure volunteers are able to perform their roles without causing harm to beneficiaries or the wider public.
An organisation’s lack of legal understanding can also result in negative consequences for volunteers themselves, impacting their finances and well-being.
Watch our bite-size training video: Legal Issues around managing volunteers
Policies
Volunteer policies create a clear and consistent framework for managing volunteers.
Our Volunteer Policy template can be edited to suit your organisation.
Safeguarding and volunteering
Organisations need to take appropriate steps to identify potential volunteers who may be unsuitable for the roles they are being recruited for. These steps include putting in place appropriate volunteer recruitment, training and management processes. Where necessary this may also require undertaking a safeguarding check to establish whether the potential volunteer has a criminal record or is barred from working with children and/or adult at risk of abuse.
The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) provides criminal records checking and barring functions to help organisations make safe recruitment decisions.
See the NCVO Safer recruitment principles for guidance.
Read Gethyn Williams blog about the social value of volunteers.