Undertaken by the Centre for Charity Effectiveness at Bayes Business School and the Welsh Institute for Health and Social Care at the University of South Wales the research explores experiences of, and organisational policies and practices for, working with volunteers in residential social care settings for older people in Wales.  Against a backdrop of declining volunteer numbers in Wales the report focusses on residential care for older people and highlights the complex picture for volunteering in the sector.

Volunteering is not evenly distributed across the social care (while 15% of voluntary sector care homes involve volunteers, this drops to 5% in public sector and 3% in private sector homes) and outcomes for volunteers can be both positive and negative.  Alongside a sense of satisfaction and of giving back, and the joy derived from developing close relationships with residents, some volunteers may at times feel overburdened, and anxious, leaving their role as it becomes too upsetting to work with residents.

The report also highlights how resources and skills to recruit, organise and manage volunteers vary considerably between care homes who are usually fully stretched, with little time or headspace to plan for volunteering, let alone to organise and manage it. As a result, there is often a strong reliance on third party organisations (frequently delivering time limited funded programmes) for support to carry out some of these tasks. While this provides crucial capacity, the short-term nature of these schemes does not support internal capability building within care homes.  In addition, at times there is duplication of effort as these third-party organisations each work on developing resources to support the growth of volunteering in the social care sector.

While care homes in the research consistently expressed a desire for more volunteers, overall approaches to the development of volunteering were characterised as “underdeveloped” i.e. with a lack of consistent focus on building and maintaining volunteer management capability, developing the systems and processes to support volunteering, commitment to create a range of volunteering roles and developing and delivering systematic volunteer recruitment campaigns. As a result, the report concluded that volunteering was considered a “pleasant extra” rather than a core strategic element of care home operations, characterising approaches to volunteering development as “hopeful rather than purposeful, and reactive rather than proactive.” This represents a significant disconnect between stated ambition and practice in volunteering in the care homes who participated in the research.

Crucially, the report highlights lack of clarity on the overall vision and ambition for volunteering in social care in Wales at a policy level, which impacts the scale and rate of growth in volunteering. To what extent is volunteering considered to be a key strand of strategies for workforce development? Is there an ambition or expectation that care homes will increase the scale and range of volunteering? If so, who is driving this agenda, and to what ends? The report argues these questions can only be explored alongside consideration of wider sector workforce challenges such as low pay, attraction and retention, and even larger questions about the role of volunteers in delivery of public services. That volunteering can contribute positively to the social care context in Wales is not in doubt, but should it need to? More specifically how appropriate is it to involve volunteers in profit-making enterprises i.e. private sector care homes?

The report concludes that volunteering in residential care homes for older people in Wales is already adding significant value and identifies five key shifts at policy and practice required for further growth:

• Clarity on the policy position regarding volunteering in social care, clearly setting out the scale of ambition and the role of volunteering in wider social care workforce strategies for Wales.
• A shift in mindset and attitude in care home leadership (particularly in private and public sector homes) from a reactive and responsive approach to a more strategic and embedded understanding of and commitment to the full value volunteering can bring.
• Development of volunteering management capability and capacity at an operational level within care homes, recognising this as a particular skill that creates demands on the already scarce time of care home staff.
• A continued focus on avoiding duplication in the creation of resources to support volunteering. This also needs to ensure the content of these resources (e.g. on how to successfully deliver the operational aspects of volunteering) is matched by resources to support the more strategic shift outlined above.
• An overall approach to support for care home volunteering focussed on building sustainable capability and capacity within each home, rather than a focus on short term external support from third parties, which is vulnerable to a changing funding climate.

Time To Care - Exploring Residential Social Care Volunteering In Wales authored by Helen Timbrell, Angela Ellis Paine and Jo Stuart (Centre for Charity Effectiveness) and Mark Llewellyn, Sion Tetlow and Carolyn Wallace (University of South Wales) is available to download from the Social Care Wales website.