Volunteers and the community

Read the original article in eHospice.

New research from the Institute for Volunteering Research and the International Observatory on End of Life Care, Lancaster University, shows how hospice volunteers continue to build bridges between hospices and the wider world.

New research, published in Health and Social Care in the Community and free to access, was funded by Dimbleby Cancer Care and Marie Curie Cancer Care.

It provides substantial evidence of volunteers both bringing the community in (eg being positioned ‘in between’ patients and paid staff and opening the hospice building up to the public) as well as taking the hospice out into the community (eg the increasing involvement of volunteers in hospice at home services and communicating the mission and values of organisations to the general population).