It was great to attend the Valuing and Sustaining Volunteering in Health Conference in Glasgow recently. This event was supported by the Scottish Government and attended by a whole range of participants from a multitude of organisations. It was a day surrounded by like minded people who had volunteering at the heart of everything they were doing.

The clear message throughout the day was the core belief in the transformative power and reciprocal benefit of volunteering. It was also recognised that everyone can play a role in their community and should have a chance to participate.

Volunteering of any sort would not be possible without working in partnership and collaboration. By building strong relationships with third sector organisations and the NHS. The need for this is to ensure that such volunteering is safe, effective and person-centred.

Great storytelling, conversations and presentations were shared throughout the day. Relationships were at the heart of all of that was discussed and the recognition that it was essential to have different roles in volunteering such as Direct and Indirect volunteers.

Finally, It was encouraging to hear Mathew Linning, Strategic Performance Manager with Volunteer Scotland outline the many benefits of volunteering from recent research and to hear Paul Okroj, Assistant Director People Driven Development with Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland as part of his summary indicate the importance for collaborative leadership for the future of volunteering.

Alison Bunce is the Programme Lead at Compassionate Inverclyde and was a parallel session chair and panel presenter at the Valuing and Sustaining Volunteering in Health Conference on the 14th May in Glasgow.