Volunteers - have charities lost the plot?

I spoke to a member who works for a large charity recently. I was offering to drive some elderly person to the local supermarket and help with their shopping. I needed a CRB check, fine but also 2 professional references. I noticed the sucking in of air when I said that I had retired 12 years ago and those I worked with were either retired or dead. That did not go down very well. Amazingly she has not been in touch.

Although I didn't volunteer in a shop as you do Brenda that was my experience too. Lots of people who knew how to do it but didn't actually do it! Also, in my particular area, there seemed to be a terror of being sued because someone was once and , therefore, allowing no leeway to the people actually doing the job!

Charley, I have been allowed to use a neighbour and a friend as referees as my husband is my employer (or so he thinks!!)

Reminds me of when I " cleared out" a lot of books when we were downsizing. These included a book of Spanish poetry. I discovered just a week later that a friend had been learning Spanish and would have loved to have it. When I contacted the shop that day I was told "Oh no! I didn't bother with that book, - put it in the recycling bag! I couldn't imagine anyone wanting that!"

The above message was in reply to Rosequartz. (I clicked "add comment". I thought this would connect it to the message I'm replying to.Is this right?

Almost right - it adds the comment chronologically after the previous comment added, which may or may not be the one you were replying to. It doesn't add it immediately after that one, so threads can get a bit confusing.

Charleygirl - that was similar to my experience when I was volunteering in SE England.
One of the things I did was help serving meals in a day centre for the elderly (many were younger than me.)
I started off for a year or 2, until someone said, have you had checks and references? Which I hadn't.
Luckily all went well and I became a bona fide volunteer, but we were worried for a while.
It struck me that we didn't get many young volunteers (this was in the early 2000s).
One of our daughters did some volunteering in a hospital soon after that, and she had to pay for the checks, which was hard as she was unemployed at the time.

Just to add, as someone else said, it's probably all due to the litigation culture which pervades the services.

I am being checked for a voluntary scheme and it seems to be going through OK. I have no references to provide, so maybe things are different in Wales. -I shan't be handling money or driving anyone though . I don't know the system at all. Not so many years ago we just put our names down, and started the job! They have to be careful nowadays I suppose.