Who volunteers?

The 1990 NHS and Community Care Act outlined an extended role for volunteer s and voluntary organizations in the provision of services for disabled adu lts and older people. In broad terms, the Act assumed an untapped pool of v olunteers, ready to contribute at little additional cost to the provision o f care. More recent policy developments, including Millennium Volunteers (S cottish Office 1997) have made similar assumptions. For organizations which involve volunteers, the expectations of their increased use in service pro vision present considerable challenges, not least in attracting new recruit s and retaining existing volunteers. The research presented in this paper b uilds on previous work to explore the current practice and organization of volunteering and to examine critically how far the reality matches the poli tical rhetoric about the role of volunteers in the mixed economy of care. T he paper begins with a critical review of recent policy and practice in vol unteering to set the context which provided our key questions. The research methodology is briefly described and the findings from a survey of 117 act ive volunteers working with adults with learning difficulties, mental healt h problems and physical disabilities, and with older people in the North of Scotland are presented. The research examines the demography and personali ty profiles of the volunteers. It examines their perceptions of volunteerin g as these relate to motivation, recruitment, selection, training, support, rewards and reasons for leaving. Finally, it examines volunteers' percepti ons of the organization of volunteering. The results are reviewed in relati on to the policy assumptions about volunteering in the mixed economy of car e.