Chamber and committees

In partnership with NHS Education for Scotland, the Scottish Government set up the Health and Social Care Covid-19 Accelerated Recruitment Portal at the end of March to enable those with relevant skills and experience to come forward and support health and social care services.

The Health and Social Care Portal is one of three strands of Covid-19 recruitment and volunteering encouraged by the ‘Scotland Cares’ campaign, hosted on the Ready Scotland website. As more than 76,000 applications have been received across all three strands, the campaign has been temporarily paused with effect from 30 April.

The returners and students who have registered with the Portal are being considered for paid positions within NHS Boards across Scotland and are unlikely to be among those providing telephone support to the extremely vulnerable group of people being asked to shield at home.

However the two other strands of “Scotland Cares” offer alternative options for individuals to offer a variety of health and care services in support of their communities throughout the Covid-19 pandemic:

- To help public services, individuals are directed towards the British Red Cross: Community Reserve Volunteer scheme;

- To help voluntary and community organisations, individuals are directed towards the Volunteer Scotland recruitment website.

The British Red Cross and Volunteer Scotland schemes connect to local authority and third sector activity in communities, creating a pool of volunteers for local organisations to draw upon and deploy as required. The roles already being undertaken by these volunteers include food-parcel distribution, shopping assistance, medicine delivery and making welfare calls.

All local authorities have established local helplines in order to identify and respond to the needs of shielded individuals in their area. Those who are advised to shield have been sent a letter setting out the support which is available to them, including details of local helplines.