HC Deb 15 April 2003 vol 404 c74W
Ian Lucas

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proportion of volunteers for victim support schemes remained in post one year after completion of basic volunteer training in the last two years. [108773]

Beverley Hughes

The Home Office provides an annual grant to the charitable organisation Victim Support to provide support to victims of crime and witnesses through its network of community victim support schemes and witness services.

Victim Support advise that, at present, they do not collect data in a form that enables this question to be answered directly.

They advise that the data they collect relating to volunteer turnover shows the percentage of volunteers which left Victim Support within the last year. But this does not show how long the volunteers had remained with the organisation after initial training.

Data is also collected about the length of time scheme volunteers have been with Victim Support. During 2000–01, 70 per cent. of scheme volunteers had been with Victim Support for over one year. In 2001–02 the percentage was 76 per cent. And in 2001–02, 26 per cent of scheme volunteers had been with the organisation for over five years.