TY - JOUR
T1 - Motivations for volunteering time with older adults
T2 - A qualitative study
AU - Same, Anne
AU - McBride, Hannah
AU - Liddelow, Caitlin
AU - Mullan, Barbara
AU - Harris, Courtenay
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Same et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2020/5
Y1 - 2020/5
N2 - Improved health, wellbeing and quality of life are associated with older adults living well at home. Enabling older adults to remain at home requires organisations to consider different workforce models to support these initiatives. Volunteers are often used by organisations providing such services. However, given the changing nature of the volunteer industry, volunteer recruitment and retention practices must be better understood. This study sought to understand individuals’ motivations to volunteer in aged care home support. Eighteen volunteers were recruited from not-for-profit aged support organisations in Perth, Western Australia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and five themes were thematically interpreted: What’s Important to Me?, Learning and Growth, Somewhere to Belong, Meet Me in the Middle, and Not Just a Number. Fulfilling volunteers’ desires for interest, social connection, self-growth, recognition, and support appeared conducive to positive volunteering experiences. These findings may suggest avenues to capture and retain volunteers in aged care home support.
AB - Improved health, wellbeing and quality of life are associated with older adults living well at home. Enabling older adults to remain at home requires organisations to consider different workforce models to support these initiatives. Volunteers are often used by organisations providing such services. However, given the changing nature of the volunteer industry, volunteer recruitment and retention practices must be better understood. This study sought to understand individuals’ motivations to volunteer in aged care home support. Eighteen volunteers were recruited from not-for-profit aged support organisations in Perth, Western Australia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and five themes were thematically interpreted: What’s Important to Me?, Learning and Growth, Somewhere to Belong, Meet Me in the Middle, and Not Just a Number. Fulfilling volunteers’ desires for interest, social connection, self-growth, recognition, and support appeared conducive to positive volunteering experiences. These findings may suggest avenues to capture and retain volunteers in aged care home support.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85084276889
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0232718
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0232718
M3 - Article
C2 - 32365081
AN - SCOPUS:85084276889
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 15
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 5
M1 - e0232718
ER -