Roger Hadley - Across the Generations

Volume 20

ACROSS THE GENERATIONS

ROGER HADLEY, ADRIAN WEBB AND CHRISTINE FARRELL

First published in 1975 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd

This edition first published in 2022

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1975 Roger Hadley and Adrian Webb

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-03-203381-5 (Set)

ISBN: 978-1-00-321681-0 (Set) (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-03-207450-4 (Volume 20) (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-03-207465-8 (Volume 20) (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-00-320706-1 (Volume 20) (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003207061

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer

The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

ROGER HADLEY

Professor of Social Administration, University of Lancas

ADRIAN WEBB

Research Secretary to the Personal Social Services Council

CHRISTINE FARRELL

Senior Research Officer, Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care

With a Foreword by
LORD SEEBOHM OF HERTFORD
and a Postscript by
REG SMITH
Director of Task Force

First published in 1975

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights are reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the porpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers.

Roger Hadley and Adrian Webb

ISBN 0 04 300052 5 hardback

0 04 300053 3 paperback

Printed in Great Britain
in 10 on 11 point Times New Roman
by Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd
at The Thanet Press
Union Crescent, Margate

by Frederic Seebohm

BARON SEEBOHM OF HERTFORD

This is an interesting study well worth reading for a number of reasons. In the first place it is a detailed examination of a major voluntary organisation where both the research team and the organisation have co-operated fully and where the latter has been prepared to face up to and see published quite major criticisms of its modus operandi and its effectiveness. It is the first enquiry of this nature that I have come across and it might well be an encouragement to others to follow suit. Secondly it reveals a growth pattern which is common to those projects which are launched by an inspired leader and later handed over to a director with a different management philosophy. The resulting staff tensions are by no means unique in Task Force.

Finally there are many lessons to be learnt on the needs of old people and the ability of young volunteers to meet these needs. I do not necessarily agree with all the recommendations made by the authors, although I would heartily endorse the need for experimentation and a continuing analysis of the results. The authors are to be congratulated on producing a valuable document, free from jargon, founded on a careful analysis, while fully discounting the obvious pitfalls in the examination of a rather small sample.

Expenditure in Britain on statutory social services has increased both relatively and absolutely since the Second World War yet it has become increasingly clear that these services fall far short of meeting the social needs which we currently recognise and can measure. There has been a growing awareness among some social administrators and politicians that this gap cannot be entirely closed by further expansion of the statutory services. This is not only because public resources are limited and are subject to many competing demands, but also because need is not a static concept; it is redefined as provision improves.

The social services for the elderly are a case in point. Many of the old are at risk in terms of their physical or mental health, but the identification and support of all the people in these categories would demand far more resources than local authority social services possess. For the services continually to monitor and respond to changes in need among the whole of the elderly population would be impossible; the social services face their own form of energy crisis. In one sense the problem is simply that there is too little cash. But it is more than this for even given the financial resources the supply of trained manpower remains insufficient. It is not hard, therefore, to understand why many social administrators are increasingly looking for sources of manpower additional to the groups of personnel, such as trained social workers who are in short supply. The use of social work aides and other paid ancillary staff is one means of providing more extensive support; the volunteer is another.

Volunteer workers have been used by a number of statutory social services such as the probation and after care service, hospitals and some local authorities. But volunteers have also figured to a significant extent in the changes that have taken place in the voluntary social services in the past few decades. During this time the voluntary sector has grown, diversified, and developed new relationships with the statutory services. Volunteer work has contributed to and symbolised many of these changes. An expanded use of volunteers, and not least of young volunteers, both within the statutory and voluntary social services, certainly seems to offer one means of narrowing the gap between social need and existing provision and may be welcomed for this reason. But it also raises a host of questions. Questions, for example, about the real costs of using volunteers if they are to provide a useful service, and about the nature of the benefits received by both the volunteers and their clients. It was issues of this kind which led to this study.

Ideally, issues as important and complex as these call for an extensive research programme which could compare the work of a wide range of different types of volunteers in various settings, and which could set these against the contribution of the paid professional. A comprehensive approach of this kind, however, would require very substantial resources and, in any case, might only be effectively designed and carried through after more limited studies had been carried out to prepare the way. It is a study of this more limited nature which we present in this book. Our subject is Task Force, a voluntary organisation which when our research began existed mainly to organise young volunteers to help the elderly. The organisation works exclusively within the boundaries of Greater London. The clients are largely people of pensionable age, many of them very old indeed, though a smaller number of younger handicapped people are also helped. The term client is used in this book to refer to these people at whom the service is directed. But the volunteer may also gain from his involvement and, one of the fundamental questions this type of enterprise raises is just who gets what kind of benefit. Although no single volunteer organisation can be regarded as typical of volunteer work as a whole, we hope we have done more than simply provide a case-study. Studying Task Force has prompted us to ask many of the central questions which must be answered by anyone interested in the use of volunteers in the social services.