Cessation of Volunteering in Later Life: Managing long-term impacts for volunteers and volunteer managers of cultural heritage organisations

晚年停止志愿服务：管理对文化遗产组织志愿者和志愿者管理者的长期影响

• 批准号: ES/X013847/1
• 负责人: Simon Bruce Davenport
• 金额: $ 31.5万
• 依托单位: Newcastle University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FX013847%2F1
• 关键词: Cessation; Volunteering; Later; Life; Managing

This study will explore how volunteers and volunteer managers negotiate moves out of a particular volunteering role and the impact that this can have in both the lives of older volunteers (aged 65+) and volunteer managers.People engage in different forms of civic participation (including volunteering) across the course of their lives, often in response to other lifecourse transitions which affect the time and resources available to them. While the patterns of people's civic participation have been studied, the impact of moving on from a volunteering role and the factors which shape the decision to move on have not. Civic participation is seen as an important aspect of successful ageing. There are different forms of civic participation, volunteering amongst them. Volunteers play an important role in delivering health, social and cultural services across the UK. Over-65s are proportionally the largest age-group of volunteers in Great Britain. However, many people in their mid-70s cease volunteering for a variety of age-related reasons though they may be moving onto other forms of civic participation.Volunteering contributes to people's wellbeing and often provides a valued source of meaning and identity in later life. A small-scale study in the UK, led by the PI for this project, suggested that leaving volunteering can be experienced as a form of loss which has the potential to undermine the benefits accrued from volunteering. This is particularly the case when people feel that personal or contextual factors are obliging them to stop even though they do not wish to.Furthermore, the study found that managing the cessation of volunteers created personal and professional challenges for volunteer managers which existing policies did not adequately address but the ways in which volunteers and volunteer managers handle this move out of volunteering can alter the impact of the move for both groups. Thus there is a need for evidence-based professional guidelines in this area.The proposed project will focus on older volunteers in cultural heritage organisations. The project will explore volunteers experience of moving out of volunteering and will develop a rich understanding of their experience and how it relates to the wider context of their lives. The project will also explore the organisational context and practices which shape this move. We will work with volunteers and ex-volunteers to understand how moving out of volunteering impacted on their wellbeing in the longer term.We will work with 8 case study organisations that capture the breadth of volunteer-involving heritage organisations in the UK. We will interview volunteers, ex-volunteers and staff. We will then carry out a national survey of volunteer managers across multiple sectors in the UK. This will enable us to test the findings from the case studies against the wider population of volunteer managers and establish the transferability of the findings to sectors beyond cultural heritage. We will use the findings of our work as the starting point for reflective conversation with our project partners with the aim of co-creating a toolkit of containing a repertoire of agreed good practice responses to commonly identified situations. We will share this will volunteer-involving organisations and agencies that work with older people.The project will provide a rich understanding of the experiences of older volunteers, and the staff managing them, as they move out of one form of civic participation (and potentially into another). As a group, older volunteers are worth studying in their own right but the insights from this group will be relevant to other groups of people who are moving between different forms of civic participation. The learning from this study will also inform new volunteer management practices to improve volunteers' and volunteer managers' experiences across multiple volunteer-involving sectors in the UK and internationally.

本研究将探讨志愿者和志愿者管理者如何协商摆脱特定志愿服务角色的举措，以及这对老年志愿者（65岁以上）和志愿者管理者的生活可能产生的影响。人们在一生中参与不同形式的公民参与（包括志愿服务），通常是为了应对其他影响他们可用时间和资源的生命历程转变。虽然对人们参与公民活动的模式进行了研究，但对放弃志愿服务的影响以及决定放弃志愿服务的因素却没有进行研究。公民参与被视为成功老龄化的一个重要方面。有不同形式的公民参与，其中包括志愿服务。志愿者在英国各地提供卫生、社会和文化服务方面发挥着重要作用。65岁以上的人是英国志愿者中比例最大的年龄组。然而，许多人在70多岁时由于各种与年龄有关的原因而停止志愿服务，尽管他们可能会转向其他形式的公民参与。志愿服务有助于人们的福祉，并往往为晚年生活的意义和身份提供宝贵的来源。在联合王国进行的一项小规模研究表明，离开志愿服务可能会被视为一种损失，有可能破坏志愿服务所带来的好处。当人们感到个人或环境因素迫使他们停止时，即使他们不想这样做，情况尤其如此。研究发现，管理志愿者的离职给志愿者管理人员带来了个人和职业上的挑战，现有政策没有充分解决这些挑战，但志愿者和志愿者管理人员处理志愿服务离职的方式可能会改变这一举措的影响对两个群体来说。因此，有必要在这一领域制定以证据为基础的专业准则。拟议的项目将侧重于文化遗产组织中的老年志愿者。该项目将探讨志愿人员退出志愿服务的经历，并将丰富了解他们的经历及其与更广泛的生活背景的关系。该项目还将探讨塑造这一举措的组织背景和实践。我们将与志愿者和前志愿者合作，了解志愿服务的退出如何影响他们的长期福祉。我们将与8个案例研究组织合作，这些组织将捕捉英国志愿者参与遗产组织的广度。我们将采访志愿者、前志愿者和工作人员。然后，我们将对英国多个部门的志愿者管理者进行全国调查。这将使我们能够对更广泛的志愿管理人员群体进行案例研究，并确定研究结果是否可以转移到文化遗产以外的部门。我们将使用我们的工作结果作为与我们的项目合作伙伴进行反思性对话的起点，目的是共同创建一个工具包，其中包含针对常见情况的商定良好实践应对方案。我们将分享这将志愿者参与组织和机构与老年人一起工作。该项目将提供丰富的经验，老年志愿者的理解，以及管理他们的工作人员，因为他们从一种形式的公民参与（并可能进入另一种）。作为一个群体，老年志愿者本身值得研究，但这一群体的见解将与其他正在不同形式的公民参与之间流动的群体有关。从这项研究中吸取的经验教训也将为新的志愿者管理实践提供信息，以改善英国和国际上多个志愿者参与部门的志愿者和志愿者管理人员的经验。