Difficulties Of Volunteering

Social welfare agencies often employ volunteers in welfare and care services. The New Right, supporting welfare privatization, has been advocating for the integration of volunteers into the social care system since the 1980s. Community care was considered as the opposite of institutional care. Community care firstly appeared in a green paper from the UK titled “Community Care: Agenda for Action”, later known as The Griffiths Report. Community care became a policy goal in a white paper called “Caring for People: Community Care in the Next Decade and Beyond”. The services in such community care program included the support for those in need at home, the intensive respite care and day care, the sheltered apartments, the cluster housing, the residential

In addition, experts were interested in combining social work supervision and volunteering for community care (Brudney, 1999; Van Dijk, Cramm, & Nieboer, 2006). Although supervision over the volunteers in welfare work might be considered as part of general social work practice, Naylor et al. (2013) nevertheless suggested certain principles for volunteering in health and social care agencies. These principles included thinking strategically about volunteering; matching volunteers to the correct role; managing and supporting volunteers; assuring volunteering quality; relationships with paid staff; and good practice. Although these principles are common, they are real and common challenges in

How to integrate volunteer teams into a national service delivery system remains a challenge for many governments. Enabling community-based volunteer teams to maintain their autonomy in an integrated delivery system while still providing reliable and stable services remains a critical practical issue. The “Compact between the Government and the Voluntary Sector” that Prime Minister Blair announced in 1997 called for integrating the voluntary organizations and guided them to the work that the government expected (e.g., public services and community care). The Compact Programme has been supported by 25 countries, including Canada, France, and New Zealand (Taylor, 2010). Unfortunately, no research has obtained significant results in support of the effectiveness of the Compact.
Outside the Western world, like in Asia, the concept of community care was introduced to Hong Kong and China in 90s (Wong, 1993). Community care was stated in the white paper “Health for All-The Way Ahead, 1990” and practiced (Tong and Fong, 2014). The idea of community care was practiced since Star Light Project 2001 and the Home Care Service 2008 in China. Researchers also started to study upon how to promote the senior residents’ participation in social activities (Chen and Wang, 2015; Prachuabmoh,