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Hospice volunteers: bridging the gap to the community?

Current demographic, policy and management changes are a challenge to hospices to develop their volunteering practices. The study upon which this paper is based aimed to explore good practice in volunteer involvement and identify ways of improving care through developing volunteering. The project co...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Morris, Sara M., Payne, Sheila, Ockenden, Nick, Hill, Matthew
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5655726/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25810042
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12232
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author Morris, Sara M.
Payne, Sheila
Ockenden, Nick
Hill, Matthew
author_facet Morris, Sara M.
Payne, Sheila
Ockenden, Nick
Hill, Matthew
author_sort Morris, Sara M.
collection PubMed
description Current demographic, policy and management changes are a challenge to hospices to develop their volunteering practices. The study upon which this paper is based aimed to explore good practice in volunteer involvement and identify ways of improving care through developing volunteering. The project consisted of a narrative literature review; a survey of volunteer managers; and organisational case studies selected through purposive diversity sampling criteria. A total of 205 staff, volunteers, patients and relatives were interviewed across 11 sites in England in 2012. This article focuses on one of the findings – the place that volunteers occupy between the hospice and the community beyond its walls. External changes and pressures in society were impacting on volunteer management, but were viewed as requiring a careful balancing act to retain the ‘spirit’ of the hospice philosophy. Honouring the developmental history of the hospice was vital to many respondents, but viewed less positively by those who wished to modernise. Hospices tend to be somewhat secluded organisations in Britain, and external links and networks were mostly within the end‐of‐life care arena, with few referring to the wider volunteering and community fields. Volunteers were seen as an informal and symbolic ‘link’ to the local community, both in terms of their ‘normalising’ roles in the hospice and as providing a two‐way flow of information with the external environment where knowledge of hospice activities remains poor. The diversity of the community is not fully represented among hospice volunteers. A few hospices had deliberately tried to forge stronger interfaces with their localities, but these ventures were often controversial. The evidence suggests that there is substantial scope for hospices to develop the strategic aspects of volunteering through greater community engagement and involvement and by increasing diversity and exploiting volunteers' ‘boundary’ position more systematically to educate, recruit and raise awareness.
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spelling pubmed-56557262017-11-01 Hospice volunteers: bridging the gap to the community? Morris, Sara M. Payne, Sheila Ockenden, Nick Hill, Matthew Health Soc Care Community Original Articles Current demographic, policy and management changes are a challenge to hospices to develop their volunteering practices. The study upon which this paper is based aimed to explore good practice in volunteer involvement and identify ways of improving care through developing volunteering. The project consisted of a narrative literature review; a survey of volunteer managers; and organisational case studies selected through purposive diversity sampling criteria. A total of 205 staff, volunteers, patients and relatives were interviewed across 11 sites in England in 2012. This article focuses on one of the findings – the place that volunteers occupy between the hospice and the community beyond its walls. External changes and pressures in society were impacting on volunteer management, but were viewed as requiring a careful balancing act to retain the ‘spirit’ of the hospice philosophy. Honouring the developmental history of the hospice was vital to many respondents, but viewed less positively by those who wished to modernise. Hospices tend to be somewhat secluded organisations in Britain, and external links and networks were mostly within the end‐of‐life care arena, with few referring to the wider volunteering and community fields. Volunteers were seen as an informal and symbolic ‘link’ to the local community, both in terms of their ‘normalising’ roles in the hospice and as providing a two‐way flow of information with the external environment where knowledge of hospice activities remains poor. The diversity of the community is not fully represented among hospice volunteers. A few hospices had deliberately tried to forge stronger interfaces with their localities, but these ventures were often controversial. The evidence suggests that there is substantial scope for hospices to develop the strategic aspects of volunteering through greater community engagement and involvement and by increasing diversity and exploiting volunteers' ‘boundary’ position more systematically to educate, recruit and raise awareness. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015-03-25 2017-11 /pmc/articles/PMC5655726/ /pubmed/25810042 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12232 Text en © 2015 The Authors. Health and Social Care in the Community Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Morris, Sara M.
Payne, Sheila
Ockenden, Nick
Hill, Matthew
Hospice volunteers: bridging the gap to the community?
title Hospice volunteers: bridging the gap to the community?
title_full Hospice volunteers: bridging the gap to the community?
title_fullStr Hospice volunteers: bridging the gap to the community?
title_full_unstemmed Hospice volunteers: bridging the gap to the community?
title_short Hospice volunteers: bridging the gap to the community?
title_sort hospice volunteers: bridging the gap to the community?
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5655726/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25810042
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12232
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