Find our most recent blog post below.
INVOLVING OLDER VOLUNTEERS, NORMALISING DIFFERENCE
Three top tips to involving older volunteers.
18 July 2023
By
Ruth Leonard, Katherine Deane, Mike Locke, Jurgen Grotz
Three top tips for involving older volunteers and to start normalising difference:
• Start by understanding complex persons!
• Start by considering shifting purposes!
• Start by exploring uncertain endings!
On Thursday 06 July 2023, the Institute for Volunteering Research organised a symposium entitled ‘Co-creating solutions to barriers in volunteer involvement of and for older adult volunteers’, at the Annual Research Conference of the British Society of Gerontology at the University of East Anglia.
What we set out to do?
In this symposium we wanted to assess and discuss the physical, personal, organisational and structural barriers to volunteering for older volunteers. The format of this symposium was deliberately co-productive, involving academics, practitioners and people with lived experience, exploring knowledges and experiences from different perspectives.
Why is this important?
Many older people are involved as volunteers. However, levels of involvement are changing. As the Centre for Ageing Better put it in 2018, ‘The challenge we face is not to engage more people in later life in community contribution, but to make sure people in later life can continue to contribute’. Furthermore, the pandemic exacerbated existing social, political, cultural and economic barriers as well as creating new ones. Such barriers do not just relate to age alone but also to health, income, ethnicity and other contributory factors. Consideration of the physical, personal, organisational and structural barriers is required now, so we can create solutions to them in this ‘new normal’.
Key points of learning
Exploring barriers to volunteer involvement for older volunteers is extremely complex as physical, personal, organisational structural barriers affect individuals in many diverse ways. Yet, in our discussion, within this complexity, three themes emerged, all relating to a simple overarching learning point: solutions to barriers can only be found if those who are experiencing them are involved in finding solutions, from beginning to end.
• Inclusively involving older people in creating solutions.
Older people want to become involved, and organisations want to involve them. When developing volunteer involvement opportunities we should expect meaningful involvement of older people, co-producing solutions with them as experts by experience. This will enable us to better understand differences as old people are not all the same and do not experience the same barriers.
If volunteer involvement opportunities are developed without such involvement, they are likely to present many more barriers.
• Sharing purposes
Volunteer involvement can be good for the wellbeing of older people but only if it is a good experience. In order to ensure a good experience understanding and agreeing shared purposes is important.
If involving volunteers is done badly, for example, in an exploitative way, the reverse is likely.
• Preparing for uncertainty
Involving volunteers can include supporting people through life’s transitions. Such transitions can both act as a reason to become involved and also a trigger to withdraw. When coming to terms with change and uncertainty, volunteer involvement can be flexible and should explore opportunities.
However, especially if a task is in the forefront of preparing for volunteering, rather than the view of the volunteers, the volunteers might experience a feeling of excessive obligation. That can mean they will not even start because they are afraid that they cannot quit, and that more is being asked of them than they want to be involved with.
Summary
If we want to make sure people in later life can continue to contribute through volunteer involvement, we will need to find solutions to barriers. We will need to normalise difference by understanding complex people, exploring shared aims and acknowledging the effects of change. In practice we suggest three top tips for involving older volunteers and normalising difference:
• Start by understanding complex persons!
• Start by considering shifting purposes!
• Start by exploring uncertain endings!
And remember, volunteer involvement should be making a difference, and should also always be little bit of fun.
The Provocation and the recording of the session are available to view. We recognise that the sound quality in the recording is poor but wanted to make it available.
Let us know what you think by emailing info.ivr@uea.ac.uk
The participation of Ruth Leonard, Mike Locke and Jurgen Grotz was funded by the Institute for Volunteering Research
The time of Katherine Deane (UEA) and Jurgen Grotz (UEA) was also supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration East of England (NIHR ARC EoE) at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. The views expressed are those of the author[s] and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.’
'Narratives of disadvantage and inequalities in Volunteering'
5 July 2021
by Dr Kris Southby
Leeds Beckett University
On 21/06/2021 the Institute for Volunteering Research and Centre for Health Promotion Research jointly hosted a symposium to discuss narratives of disadvantage and inequalities in volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic with a panel of experts and invited guests. This blog captures our main takeaways from the discussion.
Let’s start by saying that volunteering and voluntary action is, broadly speaking, a good thing. Volunteers can gain skills, meet new people, and feel good about helping others. Recipients, whether individual people or communities or organisations, can receive the support they need. Volunteering is also good at a broader, societal level in terms of creating active and engaged citizens, developing communities, and supporting the capacity of local ‘systems’, such as in health and social care or education. However, not everyone participates in volunteering and voluntary action equally and so the associated benefits are not maximised or equally shared.
The symposium on the 21st discussed how issues of inequality and disadvantage around volunteering and voluntary action played out during the COVID-19 pandemic and what this might mean as we move forward (hopefully!!) into a recovery phase. The online discussion was hosted by Jurgen Grotz - Research Database, The University of East Anglia (uea.ac.uk) and was chaired by Professor Jane South | Leeds Beckett University. The expert panel members were:
- Bridget Robinson from Black Health Initiative (@BHIleeds)
- Gary Blake from Voluntary Action Leeds (@gazzajazz | @VolActionLeeds)
- Bal Athwal from Health Education England (@NHS_HealthEdEng)
- Peter Beresford from University of East Anglia(@beresfordpeter)
- Sarah Hanson from University of East Anglia (@walkingresearch)
- Kris Southby from Leeds Beckett University (@krissouthby)
The first thing to note is: what do we mean by ‘volunteering’? Our understanding of volunteering and voluntary action effects how we understand any observed inequalities in participation or peoples’ lived experience of disadvantage. Whilst more women than men or more people who are not struggling financially might register for ‘formal’ volunteering roles, do these patterns still hold true when it comes to more informal, neighbourly helping behaviours?
Secondly: amongst the hardship of the past 16-ish months, volunteering and voluntary action can, on the face of it, be seen as a shining beacon of positivity. From NHS Volunteer Responders to people helping their neighbours with grocery shopping to ‘clap for carers’. These were all good things that happened as part of our collective response to dealing with the pandemic and extended a positive narrative around volunteering. But, dig a little deeper, and the pandemic revealed some more problematic issues.
The pandemic response has reemphasised volunteering and voluntary action as altruism – something the have’s do to help the have not’s. The idea of heroic volunteers and the helpless recipients has been repeated over and over. Just think of images of neighbours delivering medicine and food parcels for elderly or disabled neighbours who have been forced to shield from the virus. Now, of course these are helpful and supportive things; everyone needs help every now and then. But this narrative casts people into set roles and removes any sense that, for example, elderly or disabled or poorer people have anything they can contribute.
Volunteering and voluntary action as altruism also removes the politics. We’ve been told we’re “all in it together”, experiencing the same hardships and obligation to rally around for the greater good of defeating the virus. The idea of volunteering and voluntary action as an expression of civil society action to fight inequality and champion disadvantaged groups has not been present. This can be seen as part of a wider trend of co-opting the voluntary and community sector through things like funding arrangements as an instrumental tool for policy objectives that existed prior to the pandemic.
Thirdly: much of the inequality and disadvantage associated with volunteering and voluntary action comes from trying to shoe-horn people into defined, ‘formal’ volunteer roles that, whilst convenient for organisations, are ill-suited to individuals’ attributes and wants. Thinking about people at risk of marginalisation and exclusion (from volunteering and society more generally), we need to create opportunities specific to them and not expect them to arrive ‘ready made’ to do some unpaid work.
Each of the panel members recorded a position statement about volunteering and inequalities. Dr. Karen Mak from University College London also provided a position statement about volunteering in the pandemic but was unable to attend the symposium.
Let us know what you think by emailing info.ivr@uea.ac.uk