Our emergency response to COVID-19

Royal Voluntary Service mobilises volunteers to support the health and wellbeing of their communities.

As part of Royal Voluntary Service’s emergency response to COVID-19 we rapidly remodelled our services so that we could continue to help vulnerable people who rely on our support.

Between March 2020 - March 2021, our teams:

• made 303,160 welfare and companionship telephone calls, providing much needed social contact and checking that people were safe and well. Many of these calls lasted over an hour
• delivered more than 16,247 essential grocery and prescription drops to people’s homes
• distributed over 20,234 free food packs to vulnerable people at home and to NHS teams
• carried out over 8,139 patient and community transport journeys
• sent out over 38,485 activity packs to help people keep mentally and physically active at home
• made over 25,700 socially distanced home visits, bringing much needed companionship and books to people’s doorsteps.

We asked our volunteers and the people they help about the difference that Royal Voluntary Service made to their lives during the crisis.