Showcasing your great work for the public
At VCH we do good work each and every day, and patients benefit from it. Arguably that should be reward enough unto itself but, sometimes, it would be nice if more people noticed. What’s more, it would be great if residents in the communities we serve understood the incredible scope and diversity and quality of the services we offer.
Check the papers
With this in mind, keep your eyes peeled on community newspapers across VCH throughout the week of February 27. Publications like the Richmond News, Vancouver Courier and North Shore News, as well as papers in Squamish, Whistler, Sechelt and Powell River, will feature one to three-page inserts highlighting new health care programs and services, recent achievements, stats broken down by community, and staff and physician profiles from our recent 15th anniversary campaign.
Why?
The inserts are intended to draw attention to good work happening in relation to our strategic priorities, give people a big picture view of all of the health services that VCH is responsible for, and get a little recognition for the people behind the care.
Thank you
The inserts are a small gesture, but we hope you’ll consider them a well-deserved pat-on-the-back and a sincere thank you.
Laurie Dawkins
Katharine, you raise such an important point. As one of the lead people behind this project, I have to come clean and admit that volunteers are not explicitly acknowledged in these inserts.We had so much good content – and volunteers were indeed mentioned in some of it – and I had to do some ruthless editing to fit inside the page restrictions. The good news is that we are doing SO MUCH good work (and much of it involves our amazing volunteers!), but the bad news is that we had to make tough choices. In the end, many of the inserts became focused on new services and programs to make sure members of the public know what’s out there and available to them. So in other words, they became pretty “fact based”. But, I want to offer up three things: 1) Your message about volunteers has been heard loud and clear; 2) I expect we’ll make these inserts a regular part of our external communications so we’ll get another shot at featuring work and people that did not get captured this time; and 3) April is Volunteer Appreciation month in BC and you have just given us some great ideas of some stories to pitch to these same community newspapers. Thanks for taking the time to share your ideas and perspective.
Katharine Proudlove
This is a wonderful campaign. I selfishly hope it includes highlights of our amazing Community and Acute volunteers who support clients at home, in the community and in acute and residential care settings. Our Volunteers are everywhere and I feel need more recognition about how invaluable they are to our organizations mission, clients and staff. Also, as a VCH Vancouver Community Volunteer Coordinator serving all of Vancouver Community sites it is a challenge to recruit volunteers who are passionate about supporting vulnerable adults serviced by our Home Health Teams, as this volunteer role is invisible to the public (not high profile like public sites such as volunteering in a hospital or clinic setting). Our Home Health Outreach volunteers visit and support clients wellness goals and support clients in isolation at the clients home for example where they have very little interaction with staff (except me) and other volunteers (unless they are involved in another public site based role). I wish to suggest highlighting the amazing Home Health Outreach Volunteers across the city and try to recruit more for our clients who are waiting; as majortiy of clients are elderly and frail, isolated, homebound and or have special needs. Our clients value our outreach volunteers and often need support for the long term (supporting Home Health Casemanagers for eg.) but the supply of volunteers for this role is less than the demand Home Health clients in need. As our organization is trying to support clients at home where they need it most we should promote the amazing work our community outreach volunteers that servicing clients all year long. Thanks for reading, much appreciated