The Use of Volunteers in Work with Delinquents

Abstract

stimulus of an uncharted area, freedom to follow hunches, absence of cautious, publicity-conscious committees of management, clients who are asking for the service rather than demanding a right (and therefore motivated to co-operate rather than to exploit); even some of their apparent disadvantages, for example financial stringency, may be a stimulus to inwention and to external support. As the service is taken over by the state, responsibilities loom larger: flexibility and spontaneity diminish as training and supervision increase. At the same time there is likely to be a limitation of objectives, but a higher economy of effort and efliciency of achievement. A stage of proliferation and increasing specialisation of staff follows, together with an embarrassing increase in the cost of the service which tends to lead full circle back to volunteers, but now to work under professional guidance. This evolution can be seen today in medicine. education, social work and police services.Before considering the uses of volunteers in social work it will be as well to review briefly what the professional hopes to achieve. As Lady Wootton has wittily portrayed in &dquo;Social Science and Social Pathology&dquo; some social workers had claimed to be masters of Pandora's box and appear to have lost all sense of reality and humour. Whenever scientific evaluations have been carried out. and there is now a respectable list of such studies, the achievements of professional social workers and social therapists, even with lavish facilities and under the most estimable direction, have been small or absent in the field of deviant hehaviour. There is thus considerable support for Lady Wootton's modest list of objectives: the supplying of practical help and advice, good manners, ability and willingness to listen, and the keeping of efficient records.If this is accepted then there are strong arguments in favour of the volunteer: (1) in the present state of knowledge he is unlikely to do worse than the professional; (2) he is much cheaper; (3) while these objectives are simple they are nonetheless difficult (for example listening) yet perhaps less so for the volunteer whose hours are short than for the professional who must remain as good-mannered and receptive at the end as at the beginning of a long day.In fact amongst offenders and social misfits, personality disorder is so frequent and of such a high degree that volunteers must often be entirely out of their depth so that some form of case selection is an absolute necessity. Many offenders would manipulate their volunteer in a manner which would be disastrous for both, while the more primitive personalities would be quite unable to accept the friendship and emotional demands which an inexperienced worker would proffer. This means that the volunteer must have at least two, quite different functions. In the first place he may be regarded as an aspiring professional, or apprentice, and as such he must be recruited, selected and trained for the task, supervised and probably remunerated; his ...