Welcome to Spring's Volunteer Network News

Hello,

A belated happy new year to you all. There are signs spring is on the way with daffodils and lighter mornings now March is with us.

The first Volunteer Network News of 2024 brings with it an update on the Better Bones campaign, a look at the Cultural Awareness event we held in Birmingham and stories from volunteers and groups across the country. We love sharing your stories and photos, so please do keep sending these in.

Happy reading!

With best wishes,

Helen, Fiona and Lorna.

Your ROS Volunteering and Public Engagement team.

Our plans for 2024

Thank you to those of you who have shared our risk checker in recent months. We’ve helped over 280,000 people check their risk so far! We plan to extend our prevention campaign even further in 2024, as we influence care and support those living with osteoporosis in year three of our Breaking the Silence strategy. Click here to read more about our strategy and objectives

Better Bones Campaign

Our joint campaign with the Sunday Express, Better Bones, has run in the newspaper for over 36 weeks and we’ve been overwhelmed by the level of support. 

The campaign’s objective is to achieve 100% Fracture Liaison Service (FLS) coverage. Only half (51%) of NHS Trusts have an FLS, the gold standard for systematically identifying, assessing and treating anyone who breaks a bone after age 50.

Since we launched this effort, we’ve secured the support of 258 (and counting) Parliamentarians. New advocates are helping us show the benefits of fracture prevention.

We want to thank all members of this growing coalition. We and the Sunday Express are determined to convert this extraordinary level of support into a health services breakthrough for the public.

We’ll continue to keep you updated. Thanks for your support.

Volunteer Engagement Survey: An update

As you may have seen, our annual Volunteer Engagement survey has now been shared with you all. The survey is your chance to tell us about your volunteering experiences during 2023 and let us know your thoughts and suggestions. Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to fill in the survey and give us your views. We heard from some people who experienced technical difficulties while completing the survey online using Survey Monkey. We’re sorry to all those who experienced problems. To resolve the issue, we’ve sent out paper copies and extended the deadline as we’re really keen to get your responses.

We will be holding a Teams drop-in session at 11am on Tuesday 19 March to share and discuss the initial results and findings from the survey. You can book onto the session via Eventbrite and all the joining links and information will be sent nearer the time: Click here to book

If you have any questions or problems signing up, just let us know.

Catch up and Chat drop-in sessions

Thank you to all those who came along to the coffee and chat drop-in session with Helen on 13 February, and for your contributions and feedback. The session was really engaging with lots of topics covered, from the benefits of CAMEO (Come and Meet Each Other) meetings, cashless payments at support group meetings, and subtitles on ROS videos.

One of the requests that came from this session was for more informal drop-in sessions to catch up and chat with your fellow volunteers and, as a result, we have put together some dates for upcoming meetings for the rest of 2024.

Booking for these sessions will be via Eventbrite as before, and we will share the booking link with you nearer the time of each meeting. But for now, please save the dates in your diary and hopefully you'll be able to join us.

Session dates

Volunteers’ Week Catch Up and Chat: 11am Tuesday 4 June

World Osteoporosis Day Catch Up and Chat: 11am Thursday 24 October

Christmas Social Catch Up and Chat: 7pm Tuesday 10 December

Birmingham Central Mosque Cultural Awareness event

On Thursday 1 February, some of our Lead Volunteer Advocates (LVAs) attended a Cultural Awareness Workshop at Birmingham Central Mosque. We had originally planned for the event to take place last year but had to cancel due to a train strike, so we were all excited to be finally meeting up in February. The day was brilliantly organised by Fiona and Rehana Ismail, one of our LVA volunteers.

Rehana and the community at the mosque welcomed us all in to observe morning prayers and find out about prayer in Islam before we went on a tour of the mosque. After this we sat down to a delicious lunch, which had been made by the chefs at the mosque.

Some volunteers who hadn’t been able to travel, joined us online for a presentation by Rehana and Fiona on how to raise awareness of osteoporosis within the Islamic community in your local area.

Rehana shared some of her top tips for engaging with the Muslim community and making contact with a mosque. There was also time for a Q&A session to find out more about Islam and how to connect with local communities. We left some ROS leaflets and literature at the mosque and came away feeling inspired to engage even more people to raise awareness of osteoporosis.

"I enjoyed learning about the role of the mosque in the community, watching prayers and finding out more about Islam both the religion itself and how it supports those less fortunate. I felt very welcome (and the food was delicious!)"

We were warmly welcomed and send a big thank you to Rehana, Mohamed and everyone at the Birmingham Central Mosque for their hospitality.

Medway NHS Foundation Trust event

Julia Hawkins and Caroline Harris from the Medway Towns Support Group attended a public event hosted by the Medway NHS Foundation Trust in November. It was called “Prevention and Management of Frailty – Role of Nutrition and Exercise and Comprehensive Assessment” with Dr Sanjay Suman, Clinical Director and Consultant Physician in the Therapies and Older Persons’ Care Group.

“About 12 people joined the event,” says Julia. “Some were medical practitioners and others were members of the public. Two of us from the local ROS group attended. Dr Suman defined frailty and gave us the well-known statistics regarding falls, fractures and frailty. He spoke about some developments in our area including a unit on the Isle of Sheppey where a day care and inpatient assessment unit has been established, which can deal with those at risk by assessing them rapidly and signposting them where further care is indicated. This is to prevent people spending time in hospital often deteriorating while a plan is made.

“Dr Suman acknowledged the delays I had encountered when being investigated for osteoporosis and within the Fracture Liaison Service, and said it was an area he and other staff were now concentrating on.

“I raised the issue of patient involvement in improving the service, which he acknowledged would be very helpful. He agreed to contact us so we could contribute to this process.

“Since then, we’ve spoken with the Nurse Specialist who works closely with Dr Suman. She has always been a keen supporter of our local ROS group and came to speak with us at our November meeting. She has agreed to keep us up to date with developments and welcomed our offer to contribute to the process of improving the local FLS.”

Leicestershire and Rutland Support Group

Andy from the Leicestershire and Rutland Support Group has shared an update on the group and what they’ve been up to recently.

“This group has been running for several years and met face to face again one Friday morning last September at a local garden centre restaurant. About 15 people came for coffee, cake and a chat. The meeting was organised by the two Leicestershire support group volunteers Angela and Alison, who were easy to spot in their orange ROS t-shirts.

"Everyone was made to feel very welcome and were soon exchanging their stories. Some ladies from the group have gone on to swap numbers to chat outside the meetings, and firm friendships have been formed.

“I offered to help with the group at that time and several subsequent online meetings were held to decide next steps. So far, we’ve found out how many people live in each of the local postcodes so we can map future face-to-face meetings and events in different parts of the counties. We’re also aiming to change the day of these meetings and events, so as many people have access to the group as possible.

“Earlier on this year, on a cold January morning, we held another in-person meeting at Anstey Library in a small meeting room there. The library kindly waived any room hire fee for us, and in return we bought our hot drinks from them! The meeting was organised by one of our group attendees Ros, and her help was very much appreciated.

“We’re hoping that our next in-person event will be held in May. We hope to meet in Kirby Muxloe, go for a walk around the village for those that can, ending up at ‘The Castle’ pub (yes, by the village’s actual castle) where we shall hopefully enjoy a nice lunch together.

“As well as holding regular, local face-to-face events, Alison and Angela also organise many online sessions and a regular contributor to those meetings is a local consultant, Dr Veena Patel.

"Coming up on 21 March, Angela and Alison have organised an online yoga session for us, with Helen Oughton – an ROS member and qualified yoga teacher who specialises in osteoporosis. With ideas submitted by group members, we have lots of other exciting things planned for the rest of this year!”

Thank you to Andy, Angela and Alison for the update on recent and upcoming meetings. If you’d like to share what your group has been up to and what you have coming up, please get in touch and we can include your story in the next edition of VNN.

The Community Presenter team

We are often approached by organisations or community groups asking for a talk about osteoporosis, either online or face to face, and it's the Community Presenters who put on the talks for these groups.

Community Presenters Sue and Lucy have shared their recent experiences hosting presentations as part of the Community Presenter team.

Recent events have included the lunch and learn presentation, a new shorter session designed for corporate groups. Sue recently gave one of these presentations to a group from HMRC. She says: “The presentation was a great opportunity to raise awareness of osteoporosis and to encourage people to use the risk checker. It went very well with 122 people attending the online session with positive feedback and possibly more sessions in the future.”

Having recently joined the team, Lucy is one of our newest Community Presenters. Her first presentation was to a group of librarians from the Bodleian Library in Oxford, as part of a series of online wellbeing talks organised by their HR department.

“As well as explaining what osteoporosis is and how it’s treated and diagnosed, I shared a bit of my own story too. It felt good to be raising awareness like this. Luckily all the IT worked, and I had another volunteer colleague there for support to help me answer their questions.” she explains.

We’re always happy to welcome new presenters to our friendly group, so if you would be interested in holding awareness talks face to face, online or a mixture of both, please get in touch with us at volunteerengagement@theros.org.uk

The strength of sharing our stories

We’re currently reviewing our storytelling process to make sure the person and the emotion is front and centre when we’re talking about real people’s experiences with osteoporosis – whether that’s in our fundraising communications, input into research, or in our media and advertising. To do this, we’ve set up a working group made up of ROS staff, volunteers and an external company called Fireside.

Would you like to get involved or promote this in your support networks? We are firstly looking for people who are willing to share their story so we can build a bank of case studies but, longer term, we'll be looking to encourage volunteers to become 'story developers' themselves to help us capture the stories from others living with osteoporosis.

Please let us know if you would be happy to share your story or are willing to be involved in the project. We are keen to build up powerful, emotional stories with real people at their heart.

New programmes to improve support for people with osteoporosis

ROS has secured funding for two new programmes, in development this year, to improve support for people living with osteoporosis. Both will be delivered in partnership with our volunteers.

Osteoporosis Connect

The first, Osteoporosis Connect, will focus on developing more types of ‘peer-support’ - ways for people with osteoporosis to connect with and support each other. Many of our members and volunteers have told us being able to talk to others in a similar position makes a huge difference to them.

Currently, the ROS supports many groups of people living with osteoporosis up and down the country and over recent years, we have worked with you to try new ways of helping people to connect. This programme, supported by money from the National Lottery Community Fund, will help us increase these efforts – to make connection and support easier for many more people living with the condition.

The programme will have a special focus on groups of people living with osteoporosis who ROS isn’t reaching enough at the moment, such as people on low-incomes and those from South Asian communities. We know people from these groups are more likely to have worse experiences and less likely to benefit from support from their peers at the moment, so we need to make sure the programme develops ideas that will work for them.

To get to the right solutions, we'll make sure the voices of people living with osteoporosis are right at the heart of Osteoporosis Connect. The programme will use an approach called 'co-production', which means the solutions will be developed together with people who have osteoporosis, not decided in advance. We’ll be co-developing Osteoporosis Connect in the coming months, with the first new models co-produced with people living with osteoporosis in Autumn this year.

Medication Support

The second programme, Medication Support, will help people with osteoporosis better understand their medication options and make the right decisions for them through a new online service.

In 2021, members and volunteers told us that many people were not confident about managing their osteoporosis drug treatment and most were not confident they were on the right medication. People are confused and uncertain about the options, the benefits and risks, and what the right step is for them. We need clear information and support to be available across the country to help people feel confident in these important decisions about their health.

Medication Support will bring together doctors, nurses and people with osteoporosis to develop a digital support service. These design groups will explore questions like: what do people with osteoporosis want to know about medication? What helps people to understand whether medication is the right choice for them? And how should information be delivered to make it easy to understand and act on?

What we learn will then be brought together to develop the support package. We’ll be developing the programme this year, to launch in 2025.

We're excited about Osteoporosis Connect and Medication Support, two programmes which will enhance support in two key ways for people living with osteoporosis. We'll be recruiting soon for people to be involved and will send further information out through our networks. If you are particularly interested in getting involved, please email Jen.Taylor-Watt@theros.org.uk

Your photos

The last edition of VNN came out a little too early to catch the December meetings, but we wanted to end by sharing some of your festive group photos from Christmas 2023.

Please do keep sending in pictures from your meetings, events, talks and other activities you’ve been doing. We love seeing them and sharing them with the other volunteers.

Thank you for reading VNN.

If you’ve got a story to share or would like to see something featured, please get in touch.

volunteerengagement@theros.org.uk