Volunteers are the life blood of DACT. Our volunteers give up their time to support the community. These are the people that are a key factor in the success of DACT. (In 2011/12. our volunteers carried out 53,643 hours of volunteering to deliver our services.)

There are many reasons why people choose to do voluntary work. Our volunteers come from all walks of life and have a wide range of personal interests. Each volunteer decides how much time he or she wants to spend doing volunteer work – it may be a few hours a week or it may be much more. Volunteers may want to support the Car Scheme whilst others may prefer to drive our Community Minibuses, some may wish to do both. Alternatively they may prefer to work in Shopmobility. It is very much a personal choice.

Each of our volunteers will derive their own rewards and experiences during their time with DACT but all benefit from the satisfaction that they get from being able to help other people.  Many bonds and friendships are often formed both within the DACT organisation and with the people it supports.

Our volunteers provide four primary services:-

Car Scheme

Volunteer car drivers take people that need to attend medical appointments. These appointments may be local but may also be further afield, including visits to specialist hospitals in places like Oxford, London etc. Every effort is made by the DACT Office to find a driver as local as possible to the passenger to keep mileage and costs to the minimum. Drivers are currently paid 40 pence a mile by the passenger to cover the cost of fuel and vehicle overheads. Drivers are all CRB checked.

Minibus Scheme

Minibus drivers take community groups on a wide range of trips. Groups that hire our minibuses range from tiny tots and schools to senior citizens.  Trips may be to educational centres, sporting events, shopping centres, tourist attractions, garden centres, seaside resorts and many more. They may be local or much further afield and may be for just a couple of hours or all day.  Our drivers are all CRB checked and trained to the MiDAS standard.  Volunteer minibus drivers get to meet a wide range of people and visit a number of interesting places. Typically they get a lot of satisfaction from what they do and often strike up a rapport with the groups that they may get to take out on a regular basis.

Shopmobility

Shopmobility is staffed by dedicated team of volunteers who carry out a wide range of duties within their New Street premises. Their primary function is to assist people wishing to hire mobility scooters but extends to assisting people in the hire or sale of a wide range of mobility aids. Additionally the volunteers provide ongoing support to anyone that needs minor repairs to equipment, replacement tyres, or advice on any aspects surrounding mobility aids.

Volunteer Leaflet Drops

DACT are always looking  for more volunteers, particularly Car and Minibus drivers. Daventry District covers a wide area and that includes a large number of villages and towns. It takes a large number of car drivers to cover such a large area. The aim is always to try and find as many drivers as possible across the whole area, in order to minimise both the distance our drivers have to travel and the resultant cost to our customers. Also we never want to have to have to let down someone that needs to get to an appointment because we do not have a driver available. As a consequence we periodically have volunteers carry out leaflet drops across the district to make people aware of DACT  and to encourage more people to become volunteers. Given the large area to cover this is not an easy task but our experience is that  it produces an increase in volunteer drivers along with more people that become aware of DACT and register to use its services.

Volunteer Midas Trainers

DACT  have volunteers that are trained up to be MiDAS trainers. Our trainers can train you to drive a Minibus to MiDAS standards and issue a 4 year certificate.