St Patrick’s Community Support Centre: Client and Resident Pathway Program

21/11/2024

Overview/summary

The St Patrick’s Community Support Centre Client and Resident Pathway Program developed a targeted and supportive volunteer program that provided opportunities and engagement for St Pat’s clients and residents to meet their identified needs, goals, and requirements to develop skills and gain experience that leads to successful volunteering and/or employment, training or other life outcomes and opportunities.

The situation/problem being solved

This pilot program developed a framework for clients and residents to volunteer in roles within the organisation to enable them to gain skills and experience to develop independence and broaden their opportunities in a supportive, structured framework. The program was codesigned with clients and residents to ensure relevance and appeal to the targeted groups.

Strategy

Series of co-design sessions with clients, residents, caseworkers and staff to design the program.
Clients are referred by case workers.
Developing pre-volunteering sessions to support clients and residents to build foundational skills.
Prototyping weekly 2-hour sessions – some went well and continue on, some did not work.
Once competencies are met, police clearance is undertaken and volunteers are formally onboarded.

Outcome

Relationships with relevant stakeholder organisations that work with priority groups were fostered for future engagement.
17 people engaged with the program and 11 have become official volunteers with St Pat’s.
An inspiring case study is of a client who designed an “Art & Chill” activity, an art table at the day centre that people can come and join. He now runs this activity on a weekly basis and consistently gets participants and this has also been an opportunity for case workers to reach out to people while they are making art. This volunteer is now looking for study opportunities.

Key learnings

St Pat’s found that the most successful projects were when volunteers were engaged in work that was meaningful and addressed need at the organisation. It was essential to ensure that the staff that would be supporting volunteers were 100% on board and understood the purpose of the program. As St Pat’s work with clients with complex needs, it was essential that they were “volunteer-ready” and that meant that they were in stable housing and out of crisis.

All participants required pre-volunteering sessions to set out expectations and build foundational skills.

The Volunteer Management Activity Project Grants are funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services.