Involvement of volunteers in the organisation of palliative care provision

What is it about?

While previous research has shown the involvement of volunteers in care provision, this study considers the extent to which volunteers are involved in the organisation of care. It shows that dedicated palliative care services involve their volunteers the most and nursing homes the least. It shows that this difference between organisational settings is associated with volunteer training and task performance. It also shows that while most organisations are supportive of limited involvement of volunteers (informing, consulting and taking volunteers' input into account when making decisions), there was much less support for more autonomous forms of involvement.

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Why is it important?

It is the first paper to consider involvement as more than simply presence of volunteers. It applies a model from community engagement literature to explore the degree of involvement, ranging from purely being informed to having autonomy over one or more aspects of care provision. It has implications for what volunteer integration into professional care could and should look like and what can be expected if policy makers wish to pursue greater care provision by informal caregivers.

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