Successful Volunteering: Best Practices for a Successful Volunteer-Client Relationship in the Counselling Service for Older Adults and Their Families

Background

The Counselling Service for the Older Adults and Their Families (hereafter, “the Service”) has been operated by Israel’s National Insurance Institute for over fifty years. The Service offers a variety of services for senior citizens, provided by approximately 5,000 volunteers countrywide. The volunteers themselves are senior citizens, who visit about 6,500 clients on a weekly basis to alleviate their loneliness, help them realize their rights, etc.

Objective

The Service commissioned the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute to study the factors and activities that contribute to a successful relationship between the volunteers and clients to expand its knowledge about practices that lead to success and to guide the volunteers accordingly.

Method

The study used a qualitative method based on the “Learning from Success” method and the principles of dyadic analysis. Meetings were held with a committee of professionals and volunteers and in-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen volunteer-client dyads.

Findings

The study identified best practices contributing to a successful volunteer-client relationship: thirteen practices were suggested by the interviews with most or all of the volunteers, and twelve were suggested by the clients. The practices identified referred to expertise regarding content, skills used by the volunteers, and role identity. Most of the practices identified recurred in both of the study populations, supporting the validity of the findings.

The best practices identified may be grouped into four areas found to contribute to a successful volunteer-client relationship:

1. Person-centered: The volunteers took actions designed to adjust the pace and framework of the relationship, activity, content, and interventions to the client’s needs.
2. Compassionate communication: The volunteers applied techniques of active listening, expressing a genuine interest in what the clients have to say, and using a sense of humor, all contributing to bringing the volunteer and client closer.
3. Human dignity: The volunteers treated the clients with dignity and protect the boundaries and privacy of both parties to the interaction. A fundamentally respectful attitude towards the clients enables building the relationship over the long term and establishing mutual trust.
4. Mutual meaningfulness: The relationship was seen as meaningful for both sides, rather than being one-sided. The volunteers reported feeling that they contributed to the clients, but also enjoyed and benefitted from the relationship.

Recommendations

We recommend selecting volunteers whose values are seen as contributory to success, such as respect for humanity, compassion, appreciation of the client, and a wish for mutuality in the relationship. In addition, we recommend determining the skills required in advance as well as having a discussion with prospective candidates about their skills and the possibility of developing their skills in the course of volunteering. This can help identify the most suitable candidates and maintain their motivation in the long term. Finally, we recommend developing training for volunteers based on the best practices identified and assimilating those practices consistently to ensure successful relationships.

With regard to volunteer-client matching, it was found that matching people is not a purely technical issue. According to the findings, shared background can be helpful, as it can serve as a basis for matching. However, some flexibility must be allowed for, as a shared background is not always a guarantee of a successful relationship. In other words, applying the aforementioned best practices may contribute to forming successful relationships even in the absence of shared background.