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From 1-7 June 2013 it is Volunteers’ Week, the annual celebration of the contribution that volunteers make across the UK.

At TimeBank this poses an unique challenge – not only does TimeBank work with volunteers, all our staff get an additional five days volunteering leave to pursue their own volunteering interests. So when Volunteers’ Week comes around it can be a bit of a busman’s holiday.

Our day jobs mean that we spend a lot of time recruiting and supporting volunteers delivering  our mentoring programmes. When the Birmingham TimeBank team were planning what we wanted to do, we decided we wanted to look for an activity away from this –volunteering as a team on a one-off opportunity, working on an environmental project. 

One-off opportunities bring their own challenges – something we know only too well, having spent the past 10 years connecting businesses and communities, designing and running skills-based volunteering opportunities that match companies with local community-based partners. Local community organisations need plenty of notice, expert guidance and support if they are to identify meaningful team volunteering opportunities. Even the large national volunteer-involving organisations need plenty of notice if you want to be involved. 

How to find a local community project, that would accommodate four people at short notice, and where a one-off volunteering contribution would make a significant difference? We considered the usual routes – the online volunteering opportunities website do-it, our local Volunteer Centreand the Volunteers’ Week website – all have fantastic opportunities. However, in the end it was talking about some of the great local volunteer-involving projects we had visited with partners, friends and families that led us to the National Memorial Arboretum.

The National Memorial Arboretum covers 150 acres in Staffordshire and provides a living memorial to all of those in the armed and civil services who have made personal sacrifices while serving their country. Importantly, the focus is not just military. The work of the police, ambulance and civil services are all commemorated, as are those who worked for charities. 

Particularly moving is the Shot at Dawn Memorial which commemorates the British and Commonwealth soldiers shot for desertion or cowardice. It is now accepted that the real cause for their reaction was Post Traumatic Distress Syndrome – this resonates strongly with TimeBank’s Shoulder to Shoulder programme where we support ex-service personnel suffering PTSD as a result of recent conflicts. 

What will we be doing? – we will be spending the day weeding, pruning and mulching. Each member of the team will also bring food along for a potluck picnic, so it will be a day of volunteering, team-building and good food in the glorious sunshine. Hopefully l will also have time to find the memorial shrub dedicated to Simon, a ship’s cat who “served” on the Royal Navy ship HMS Amethyst during the Chinese Civil War, survived injuries from cannon shells and killed off a rat infestation during his service, and to date is the only cat to be awarded the Dickin Medal, and have his obituary in the Times.

Over the last few months I have spoken to nearly 100 carers about their lives, their struggles, their achievements and what they would like to see change. And the one thing I’ve noticed is how they talk about their lives.

Everything is referenced to caring. It’s not just a task, it’s a vocation. More than once I have sat in a room with six people with over 100 years caring experience between them. Not once have I heard someone say “I wish I could stop and do something else with my life.”  It’s as if this would be like wishing away something that is important in defining who they are.

Part of the struggle of making caring integral to your identity is acknowledging your own need for care. Our mentoring project Carers Together specifically requires carers to identify themselves as needing support. But whenever I ask carers what they would like, they always ask for something for the person they are caring for- better medical co-ordination, confirmation over Disability Living  Allowance changes or something else to help the cared for person.

Even when the request seems to be about the carer, such as: “I need help with my patience”, this is often about providing better care for someone else. This is great to hear, it’s a true expression of altruism and people have sacrificed very large proportions of their lives to help someone in need, but it does make it difficult for carers to make time to receive their own support. If who you are is someone who looks after other people it can be difficult to be ‘selfish’ and make time for yourself.

Carers get told repeatedly that they get need to make time for themselves and many have said to me: “That’s a great Idea, in theory.” Lots of this reflects the practicality of not having someone  to take over the work they are doing, but some of it comes down to the challenge in letting go of the perception of themselves as being the person who does the looking after. Accepting help from Carers Together is an acknowledgement, not just that you need practical assistance, but also that you need the support of another human being.

Much of the project is aimed at addressing the isolation that carers face. Part of this isolation is not having emotional support from other people. Sometimes it is possible to be strong and just get on with caring and then things change. Problems appear on the horizon, the future becomes uncertain and the need for someone to talk to becomes keenly expressed as worry, tiredness and feeling isolated. Carers too often find themselves in this position and soldier on. Perhaps if you’re in this position you can accept that everyone needs to be cared for, especially when you are doing so much caring yourself.

Two reports on the BBC website and in the Guardian this week have highlighted the challenges faced not just by serving personnel in the armed forces, but also for reservists, territorials and ex-servicemen and women.

This resonates strongly with our own experience on our Shoulder to Shoulder mentoring project, where we recruit volunteers to support ex-servicemen and women living with mental health problems in the community.

Where once it was accepted wisdom that it would take a significant period of time for PTSD to impact veterans lives, we are now working with much younger veterans – many in their 20s.

They will usually be living with a wide range of mental health problems in the community, often exacerbated by unemployment, homelessness and substance misuse – and a significant proportion will also have spent time in prison.

We are developing links with prisons to try and ensure that referral pathways are in place for veterans leaving the prison system - we know our intervention makes a difference to a veteran’s sense of wellbeing, trust and hope for the future.

If you’d like to know more about Shoulder to Shoulder take a look here.