Motivations and Rewards of Volunteers and Informal Care Givers

Abstract

After two decades of benign neglect, the importance and potential of informal care, volunteering and voluntary organisations have been &dquo;rediscovered&dquo; by the lay and academic mandarins of British welfare policy. This, no doubt, reflects an accumulating wisdom borne of policy experience, but it also reflects revised expectations about public expenditure and the promise of state collectivism in the context of the budgetary crisis of the State.During the next decade and more, it is unlikely that the provision of resources to social services departments will keep pace with the rising level of demand.Nowhere is this more the case than in the care of the aged, particularly those over seventy-five, a client group increasing rapidly in numbers. Far from being able to extend the degree to which they will meet needs, the social services departments will be unable to provide for them as effectively as they do now,as long as they maintain their role unchanged. Particularly in view of the importance of informal helpers in the care of the aged (Townsend (1965), Shanas et al (1968) and Moroney (1976)) policy makers must develop ways to encourage and support informal and voluntary activity. The change in assumptions will inevitably induce new trends in research, indeed a new research programme. Among the research issues must be what rewards attract and retain volunteers, since it will be widely appreciated that without an understanding of this, interventions and the policies that sustain them will be unnecessarily clumsy, and possibly even short-lived. However, whilst the importance of informal and voluntary care is widely acknowledged, it is not obvious that there exists a literature that contributes an understanding of the motivations and rewards expected and enjoyed by voluntary helpers (I). In an attempt to support and stimulate voluntary and near-informal care, a number of social departments have implemented schemes in which help is procured by the offer of cash payments(2). These range from schemes for street wardens to the Kent Community Care Project which attempts to generate informal care for the elderly by the method of payment(3) By doing so the social services department undertakes the management of the structure of caring rather than the caring role itself. The argument of this paper'has been developed in the context of the Community Care Project, which is the experimental evaluation of an innovation using volunteers and &dquo;paid volunteers&dquo;. The social workers control a budget which they can allocate between the recruitment of volunteers and paid volunteers, other privately provided * Supported by a grant from the Personal Social Services Council at The University of Iowa Libraries on June 16, 2015 nvs.sagepub.com Downloaded from /48services, and departmental services for which they pay at a price equal to estimated &dquo;marginal cost&dquo;. The clientele are old people whose material, social and health circumstances put them on or above the margin of need for accommodation in old people's homes. T...

Volunteering for a Lifetime? Volunteers’ Intention to Stay in Portuguese Hospitals

“…The literature underlines the importance of understanding volunteers' motivations in order to allow organizations to meet volunteers' expectations (Qureshi et al 1979). Identifying the key motives of individual volunteers is fundamental (Bussell and Forbes 2002), and fortunately there has been substantial research investigating and examining volunteers motivations (Bussell and Forbes 2002;Clary et al 1998;Smith and Schneider 2004;Wymer 1999).…”

The Influence of Open Source Software Volunteer Developers’ Motivations and Attitudes on Intention to Contribute

“…Satisfaction is not just a byproduct for those engaged in volunteer work, but is expected by volunteers (Smith, 1981). Volunteer work is perceived as an exchange between a volunteer and her work situation (Sharp, 1978;Kemper, 1980), whereby time and effort are exchanged for satisfactions to the individual (Qureshi et al, 1979). The descriptive and prescriptive literature on volunteering suggests that volunteers should be satisfied on the job in order to persevere with it (Naylor, 1967).…”

Studying neighbourhood leaders' participation in residents' organizations in Hong Kong and Singapore: some theoretical perspectives

“…They are engaged in voluntary activities aimed at improving the social or physical well-being of residents in their neighbourhoods. Unlike participation in profit-oriented organizations, the neighbourhood leaders do not receive any tangible benefits (Smith, 1980b: 34-75;Qureshi et al, 1979). In the light of this, profit motives in terms of monetary gain are least important in affecting their participative behaviour.…”