Volunteer
Teaching simple CPR skills to members of the public who volunteer with us, then asking the volunteers to practice them through teaching schoolchildren, increases both willingness and confidence to perform bystander CPR, should the need ever arise.
From the moment the heart stops beating, every minute that passes without CPR reduces a casualty’s chance of surviving by 10%. Therefore immediate, effective chest compressions give the casualty the best chance of survival.
Volunteering with us means that you will be able to perform bystander CPR should you ever need to; as well as teaching the next generation how to save a life as well.
We have volunteers from all walks of life who, like you, are motivated and understand that learning and practising these simple skills by teaching children can make a real difference.
Our volunteering opportunity is open to all UK adults.
We provide training-so volunteers can deliver the scripted session, the CPR manikins to teach with as well as the framework for offering your time and organising the bookings from schools for sessions.
Please watch the video “Our Volunteer Process” which explains how the charity works and the volunteering process and then scroll down for our FAQ’s, links to watch our training videos as well as the links to the volunteer contact form and information leaflet.
What Skills Will I Teach?
To find out about our training session you can watch our skillset videos by clicking the “training videos” button below or view more details about our training model on the “Training Model” page via the Training tab at the top. When you are ready to help us create a Nation of LifeSavers, please complete the volunteer contact form via the button below and we will send you some more information.
Still have some questions? Here are the answers to the ones we most often get asked:
Yes absolutely.
Our session takes approximately one hour to deliver to the children. We ask volunteers to offer a minimum of four sessions a year to practice these vital skills and equip and empower children across the country.
Of course, we are always delighted if volunteers are able to offer more. But think about it… Only four hours a year to teach young people how to save a life!
We welcome people who are formally CPR trained as volunteers, but it is not a requirement to be a volunteer instructor with Little LifeSavers.
Learning our simple model and agreeing to teach it exactly as it is laid out is all that is required.
Formal CPR training provides far more than our simple bystander skills model and is therefore not necessary to become a volunteer instructor. It is our aim to reach as many children as we can with our simple skill set, and we need to recruit as many volunteer instructors as possible throughout the UK. It is neither feasible nor necessary to formally train thousands of adults in CPR when the model we teach is so simple.
The short, easy answer to this is as often as you can. This is because it means that we can teach more children; and it is good practice for you as a volunteer instructor, especially if you have just started with us. Ideally we would ask for all our volunteer instructors to be available for one day, or a half day, once a month. We only teach during the school day and in term-time. Volunteers who do not teach for six months will be required to attend a Zoom Training session again to refresh their memory for the training model.
Sessions take approximately an hour to deliver, but can often run on by ten or fifteen minutes so we recommend that you allow for 90 minutes to deliver the training. We have set the session times as starting at either 10 am in the morning or 1pm in afternoon so as to make scheduling simpler for both schools and volunteers. Schools will be given the contact details of volunteers who are available for the session, so they can request a different start time if needs be. Please also allow for travelling time.
We have a state-of-the-art online Booking System which will coordinate your geographic location, travel distance and the dates you can offer teaching, with every other volunteer near to you. This means that when dates and travel radius overlap for three volunteers, a date is marked as
“available” on the system. A school located in that radius can then go ahead and book.
For an enquiring school, the booking system shows when volunteers who are geographically near to them can come and teach. So availability of volunteers in Aberdeen, will not be shown to a school looking to book a session in Kent for example. If there is no marked availability, schools can use the
“request a session” facility, and geographically relevant volunteers will receive an email asking if they can be available for a specific date.
In the past, sessions were organised by a single volunteer emailing or messaging their local volunteer pool, and asking for availability on certain dates. We found this method of organising the sessions
very laborious and time consuming, so have moved to a centralised and automated system. Schools can simply see dates that are available and choose.
However, this does require all volunteers to engage with the system and tick the dates they can offer the charity; either a morning, or afternoon, or both, as well as keeping a regular check on their emails.
The system will message and email when one of your dates has been booked. This will include the details of the school and numbers of children.
We have a duty of care to the children and communities we serve to safeguard the children we teach to the best of our abilities.
To fulfil this, each of our volunteers must undertake an enhanced DBS Check. If you are already a subscriber to CRB online, you can simply grant us access to your ‘update service’ and there is nothing to pay. If you are not, we will ask you to have new check and subscribe.
Whilst there is no fee from the DBS for checks for volunteers, we have to use an umbrella body to do our checks. As an organisation we do not, yet, undertake enough checks per annum to be able to do this ourselves. So we ask you to pay the administration fee please.
This helps us to ensure that new volunteers go on to commit to teaching, rather than volunteering simply to obtain a free DBS check without any service to Little LifeSavers. We have an obligation also to those who fundraise and donate money to us, to ensure that we spend those funds on the work of the charity. So it is important that we safeguard against this happening. The donation for the DBS check can be entered on a tax return as a charitable donation
Yes absolutely. If you believe as we do, that learning and practicing basic bystander rescue techniques is important, then you can volunteer.
We have considered the needs of our volunteers very carefully and want everyone to feel valued and supported when delivering our sessions. Watching the training videos is the first step to seeing how simple our skillset is. One you have been through the DBS check procedure and have read and signed our volunteer paperwork, you will have access to the following:
- The training videos to watch and refer back to.
- A live zoom training session with our medically qualified trustees.
- A written script of the session to refer to.
- A quiz to test your knowledge and a certificate.
- Standard answers to FAQ’s the children may ask.
- An account on our automated booking system.
Along with these steps, the schools are asked to have the capability to show the “Introduction and Skillset Demonstration” video at the start of the session. This also serves as an immediate reminder of the skills and means you will not have to demonstrate the skills live, until you feel comfortable to do so.