Volunteering for charities should be prescribed by health professionals to improve people’s health and wellbeing, according to the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

The BHF wants to see volunteering given a more prominent profile in social prescribing, where health professionals refer patients to community organisations to take part in activities that have health and wellbeing benefits.

More than nine in ten (92%) BHF volunteers surveyed said giving up their time for the charity had improved their mental health, while two in five (80%) said it had improved their physical health.

A separate survey published by mental health charity Mind earlier this month revealed the mental health benefits of volunteering in charity shops.

Meanwhile, research published last month by the Centre of Economics and Business Research looked at the emotional benefits for donors who also volunteer.

The BHF would also like to see the charity sector support volunteers to work for several good causes and more easily move between organisations.

The measures are needed to improve the range of opportunities on offer, better target young people for roles and halt a slide in volunteering, according to the health charity.

The charity's survey found that hours worked by volunteers were down by a fifth in June last year compared to before the Covid health crisis.

This comes as the average age of its volunteer workforce has fallen with “an increasingly younger demographic” of people looking for “time limited and more informal roles”.

Between January and March this year more than half (53%) of its volunteer recruits were 16-24 years old, compared to just over two in five (42%) pre-pandemic. Over the same period the new recruits aged between 45 and 64 fell from more than a fifth (22%) to only 13%.

The charity sector needs to come together to “develop systems to allow volunteers to move easily between charitable organisations”, added the BHF.

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