NSPCC Speak out, Stay safe volunteer, Karen McManus Karen, from Romsey, began volunteering for the NSPCC more than ten years ago for it’s Speak out, Stay safe programme, which is delivered by volunteers in primary schools across the country.

It helps children understand in an age-appropriate way: • Abuse in all its forms and how to recognise the signs of abuse • That abuse is never a child’s fault and they have the right to be safe • Where to get help and the sources of help available to them, including the NSPCC’s Childline service.

Put very simply, I volunteer in schools in Hampshire because the NSPCC does so much good work. Delivering a very clear message, in a practical way with age-appropriate language made complete sense to me.

The message that we give to children is to ‘Speak out to Stay safe’. Should they ever feel unhappy, unsafe or sad they should speak to a trusted adult who can help them to feel happy and safe.

Speak out, Stay safe came into existence because Childline was hearing from children who had and were being abused, and the view was that we should go them rather than wait for them to come to us after the abuse had happened. That very much appealed to me as a supporter of the NSPCC for many years.

I would so love to say that my volunteering is altruistic, but I can’t because I get so much out of it. We know that we help vulnerable children, and although we could never measure the full extent of our impact, we do know that what we do has made a difference to so many children.

What we deliver and how we deliver these messages to children has changed quite a bit since I started over ten years ago, however everything that we do and say is all driven by children. The NSPCC and Childline are totally child-centric and focused on the fact that every child deserves a happy childhood.

We have shifted from delivering assemblies to children, as these are now delivered through a film that is fronted by Ant and Dec, which the children love. Our role is to deliver classroom workshops with children in Year 2, which very closely mirrors their assembly and lasts up to 30 minutes, and to deliver classroom workshops to Y5 and Y6 children for about 60 minutes which explores more information and is more interactive. Both sets of workshops use age-appropriate language.

I started volunteering because I took early retirement and was looking to do something both meaningful and challenging. My background was in HR and Learning and Development, so I felt that I had some transferable skills that I could put to use. Fellow volunteers come from very varied backgrounds and the training is immaculate, so anyone who feels passionate about keeping children safe would be able to do this.

The people that I currently volunteer with and have worked with in the past are just so lovely and means that I have made some very dear friends through volunteering for the NSPCC. A positive additional outcome that I wasn’t expecting. A lot of us meet socially, which is just great.

There was and is much flexibility in how we volunteer, for example, we can cross into different areas dependent on where we live - I live in Romsey but can work in Wiltshire because of my location. It is also very flexible in that we, as volunteers, are not tied into any particular times or days of the week, which makes it very attractive in managing everything else that happens in our lives. Our commitment is to deliver in two schools per month and attend any team training.

We are so well supported by our NSPCC Managers and each other, the material is well written, we are well trained and kept fully informed of any changes in safeguarding. Additionally, the teaching staff that we meet are welcoming and the children are, quite simply, amazing. What we do makes a difference to so many of them.

The NSPCC is recruiting new volunteers across Hampshire. To sign up, visit join-us.nspcc.org.uk