My Volunteering story – AiM programme

Natasha Kitchen 

 

"I started volunteering for the AiM programme in April 2025, a programme offered to patients under the therapy team in Oxford hospitals to have an artist, dancer or musician come into your home for an hour a week and do a creative session with you. I volunteer with the artist to go into each participant’s home and assist with delivering an art session to benefit their mental and physical health. The first participant was keen to start and thought it was a wonderful idea to have a break in her routine and to try something new.

 

Upon arrival of our first session, it was clear the participant was slightly overwhelmed with the amount of choice we had on offer, and so Vickie (the artist) quickly narrowed her choices down for her and picked a focus for her to do. This helped her mood and she was very happy to go along with whatever we suggested. We started off with flower stencils and used felt tips to trace the outlines. The participant was very self-critical over her work and said she felt slightly judged since she was doing art with two artists, but after some reassurance she became more confident. The following week we focussed her on some collaging, using a gardening magazine as the resource and cutting out things that interest us the most. Our participant enjoyed this more since she enjoys nature and her garden, however still seemed self-critical of her work. We asked her to come up with something she liked about her work which helped her to see the positives and not so focused on the negatives. During the session we chatted a lot about holidays and the garden, which took her mind off of hospital. She seemed more relaxed than the first week and very happy to have someone to talk to. The third week was more of a turning point as she seemed happier to crack jokes now that she had gotten to know us a bit more. She was also less critical of her work and got stuck in straight away to the watercolour task we had set her.

 

Being a volunteer with the Oxford Health Charity is really rewarding to see the progress in your patient’s mental health and artistic ability. Even after two weeks she seems less stressed at the idea of making art, and happier to have a chat with us when we arrive, even though it’s only an hour per week. It is lovely to see her progress and to hear her say things like ‘it’s nice to see you two for a chat more than anything’ and ‘this has definitely taken my mind off of the hospital and my pain’. Those are the two main reasons I love art as a therapy and getting to be a volunteer and seeing it first hand is really fulfilling.”

“The role of a volunteer in supporting these sessions is really valuable to ensure the monitoring occurs, reflections can be captured together and practically within the intervention. Without Tasha the session could not happen or be successful. Thank you for your support and time.”

 

 Vickie Kearney - AiM Home Artist

Read more about the AiM Home study launch here - 

“The project would not have been possible without the help of the volunteer team and the AiM Home volunteers who have all been wonderful to work with and have been able to really contribute to the study with their observations and data collection”

 

Angela Conlan, Project Lead 

“Developing this role together with the research team has been fantastic for the Volunteer Programme. This is also our first role that sees Volunteers going out to a patient’s home, albeit not alone, this did involve some careful and in depth development and considerations to ensure safety for all involved is considered throughout.

 

We are incredibly fortunate to have quality networking partnerships across NHS Volunteer services and this has been pivotal in sharing best practice to develop a role such as this.

All of our Volunteers are introduced to the NHS England Volunteer training and for this role we have carefully designed an in-depth role handbook, an introduction day and tailored lone working training.

 

Needless to say this role was popular from the moment we launched for recruitment, and we have such wonderful Volunteers as part of the team. They are so enthusiastic about the project and the support they are able to give and the feedback from them so far has been lovely to hear. We are so grateful to them for making this possible and can’t wait to see how it progresses” 

Becky Deane, Interim Volunteer Programme Lead

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The AiM Home research team are still taking referrals for places on the study through the district nurses and community therapy teams. Contact the research team on [email protected] for further information

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We are grateful to all of our Volunteers that show such passion and enthusiasm in their roles and we hope these opportunities support them on their journey.