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.’
'VOLUNTEERING IN A GLOBAL PANDEMIC'
Reflections from the VSSN Spring Day Conference
28 June 2021
by Dr Carol Jacklin-Jarvis
Director of the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership
Faculty of Business and Law, The Open University
carol.jacklin-jarvis@open.ac.uk
@Carol_CVSLDr
In this extended day event VSSN researchers and practitioners from the UK heard directly from volunteer-involving and volunteer support agencies around the globe, with presentations from the Americas, Asia and the Pacific region, and Africa and Europe. The inclusion of different voices from so many different contexts highlighted the impact of volunteering during the pandemic on a vast range of challenges. From India, we heard about the role volunteers played in supplying oxygen. From Peru, we heard about the support that volunteer psychologists gave to women in domestic abuse situations. From Trinidad and Tobago, we heard about the development of a volunteer e-mentoring service. There were multiple stories from around the globe of voluntary action in local communities to provide food, assuage loneliness, and provide a support structure to meet local needs. Indeed, it was this everyday and yet extraordinary, often informal and self-organised local community support that was perhaps the most dominant theme of the day – described by one participant as ‘love in motion’
A second theme was the implications for volunteering support and infrastructure organisations of this growth in informal community-based voluntary action - in a context where many more formal volunteer-involving organisations have had to limit their services due to lockdown. Several participants reflected on how their organisations might harness the growth in community-based, neighbourly action, but also recognised that the relationship between community action and the formal part of the sector is by no means straightforward. In the words of one of our participants, there is a ‘fine line between encouragement and interference’. Understanding and working along that fine line in very different contexts poses a challenge for volunteer alliances and infrastructure agencies. Participants talked about the importance of the ‘volunteering ecosystem’, ‘tendrils of association’, the ‘intersectionality of formal and informal’, and the enabling environment, but also reflected on very different political contexts and the impact of those contexts on structuring support to volunteers. An example was the discussion of national volunteer strategies (or their absence) and differences in regulation.
A third significant theme was the role of digital in enabling volunteering during the pandemic and the importance of digital for the future of volunteering. Digital technology makes things possible and engages people in new ways (as our global discussion illustrated). Tech enables a ‘mobility of knowledge’ and participants gave examples as to how volunteering activity developed and grew through, for example, social media, and online volunteering. However, tech can also marginalise, and this needs working through in the future to ensure a move to digital does not further exclude those who are already marginalised. In one example, we heard about partnerships between business and schools to give children access to technology, but it’s not clear whether such partnerships will continue beyond the pandemic.
The final theme of the day was partnerships and collaborative working. We heard of great examples of collaboration between volunteers and business, and volunteer-involving organisations and government. But this was where the darker side of pandemic volunteering also emerged – the absence of government support in some cases and the failure of centralised volunteering schemes; gaps between government and sector-led support and services; and questions about the legitimate role of volunteers in state welfare.
This was an extraordinary day – hearing directly from people involved in making volunteering happen around the globe. It reminded us all of the kindness and generosity of so many during the pandemic, but, looking ahead, also posed important questions for research and practice - about the future of community-based volunteering and its relationship with formalised volunteer-involving organisations; the role of volunteering in future state welfare; and the shape of future volunteer infrastructure.
The panellists were kind enough to record position statements to help us get the conversation started. They are very powerful, so we encourage you to view them if you are interested in diverse perspectives about the role of volunteering in a global pandemic.
Let us know what you think by emailing info.ivr@uea.ac.uk