Barbara Baroff Feinstein - The New Volunteerism: A Community Connection

NEW AND ENLARGED

The New Volunteerism

A Community Connection

Barbara Feinstein
Catherine Cavanaugh

First published 1976 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

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Copyright 1978, 1976 by Taylor & Francis.

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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 76-7838

ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-0685-5 (pbk)

To our husbands and best friends

Herb Feinstein and Mike Cavanaugh

To Barbaras daughters, Lisa and Debbie, who are her most devoted fans

Thank you for the love and inspiration that you give us.

Louis Lowy, MS in S.S., Ph D

Associate Dean, Boston University School of Social Work

Volunteers have always been an integral part of the American scene. Professionalization of the helping services and specialization have at times seemed to diminish their importance. In each period, however, voices have been raised to indicate that we were involved with changing patterns rather than elimination.Cohen, Nathan E., ed. The Citizen Volunteer, p. xiii.

The 1960s have been a period when such voices have been raised again and when volunteering took on a new meaning for many people. During that period, a redefinition of volunteerism has taken place in the social welfare field. Generally a volunteer has been defined as an individual who contributes his/her services to a cause or organization without remuneration. In a new definition, the phrase without remuneration has been modified to include: commensurate with the value of the services rendered, and before long the term para-professional appeared, denoting that this person so designated assists professionals in carrying out their particular functions, sometimes with pay, sometimes without pay. The line of demarcation between volunteers and para-professionals has not been neatly drawn, and in many instances, the original definition of a volunteer as a person performing a task without pay has been amended to include a person performing a task at a minimal pay. Increasingly, para-professionals, such as case-aides in the human services fields, have become accepted as service providers who aid full-fledged professionals to carry out specific tasks.

As a result of a recognition of the myriad contributions which para-professionals, paid or unpaid, have made in the last decade, social workers as well as other human service professionals have come to accept and respect these contributions, and in fact have moved towards delimiting various levels of practice by task differentiation. The National Association of Social Workers has moved towards such a categorization with specification of levels of practice by complexity of task, and requisite training for each level1, and Frank Reissman has conceptualized the role of the new non-professional and has related this role to new career patterns for individuals within the context of their contributions to service as para-professionals.2 Willard Richan evolved a theoretical scheme for determining roles of professional and non-professional personnel predicated upon worker autonomy on the one hand and client vulnerability on the other.3 He pointed out that when worker autonomy and client vulnerability are high, the pure professional would be called for, while para-professionals such as case-aides would come into play when client vulnerability and worker autonomy were relatively low. Although this scheme is an over-simplification, it has provided a theoretical handle to differentiate levels of practice and to guide standards for training. Meanwhile, data have shown that a complement of full professionals, para-professionals and non-professionals have particular know-how, expertise and skills that they can bring to bear upon social problems and conditions which need change or amelioration.4 Consequently, the role of full professionals has become redefined, and their tasks now include a heavy dose of training and supervision of para-professionals or volunteers. Since professionals and para-professionals have functioned as members of teams, all parties had to learn the role of being team-members.

This book tells the story of a new volunteerism. It presents a graphic description of the rise and fall of a case-aide program in a mental hospital, of the emptiness of a mental hospital, of the sense of despair of its patients and the void in the lives of those who live and work there. However, this book is not only confined to a description of the hospital, the program and the people involved, but also depicts the milieu and the ups and downs of events, and demonstrates that a case-aide program did work. The story presented bears witness to a highly motivated force of volunteers who have reaped psychic rewards for meaningful jobs well done.

This report demonstrates further that a case-aide program needs a philosophy which was simply stated as relationships felt, communicated, and conveyed, are a powerful tool in channelling despair into hope. As long as human beings can communicate and show that they care for each other, they will benefit from this encounter. What else can we learn from this project?

(1) Professionals do not have to hide their lack of omnipotence. On the contrary, they strengthen non-professionals in their sense of security by freely admitting then own limitations. (2) The extent of influence by professionals can be increased by an appreciable ration through the judicious use of para-professionals volunteers and many problems that demand the services of a caring human being are closer to resolution when such caring human beings are available. (3) What case-aides need, such as a sense of reality, a skill to establish, maintain and terminate relationships, and resourcefulness, apply to all human service workers. (4) Supervision is effective as a practice method of telescoping expertise, experience and know-how through various professional levels to the consumers of the services. The chapter dealing with this subject is appropriately called. The BackboneSupervision. Here the authors describe the use of five types of supervision and delineate the appropriateness of each type for particular purposes. They argue for a combination of these five types (individual supervision, group supervision, peer supervision, co-therapy, and co-supervision); regardless of types used, the authors make a powerful case that only through competent supervision by professionals can case-aides achieve the service goals. (5) We learn much about the conditions under which work with groups rather than with individuals alone became a preferred stance of practice; case-aides in fact become group-aides. This chapter provides valuable information on the training of volunteer group leaders; it also demonstrates the effectiveness of this modality in working with the mentally ill, especially those who have been institutionalized. It might serve as a model for the development of other volunteer group-work services with such populations as: the blind, the retarded, the physically handicapped, etc. As a result, the nomenclature is in need of revision to encompass work with individuals and groups. (6) A chapter modestly tucked away towards the end of the book teaches us quite a bit about organizational and structural variables of the mental institution and how these have impinged upon the development, operation and termination of this program.