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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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'You're not really a visitor, you're just a friend'
— how older volunteers navigate home visiting | | Author(s) | Lucy E R Lilburn, Mary Breheny, Rachael Pond |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 38, no 4, April 2018 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, April 2018 |
| Pages | pp 817-838 |
| Source | http://www.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Voluntary workers ; Visiting ; Personal relationships ; Social contacts ; Qualitative Studies ; New Zealand. |
| Annotation | At the intersection of increasing social support needs due to population ageing and the promotion of older age as a time of contribution and social connection, volunteering is an important focus with advantages for older people. One service that addresses both these imperatives is home visiting. Home visiting services connect home visitors with isolated older people. To examine how older people navigate volunteering for a home visiting service, six visitors from an Age Concern accredited visiting service in New Zealand were interviewed and the interviews were analysed using discourse analysis. A professionalism discourse was used to construct home visiting as a structured social support service that improved the lives of isolated older people. A personal relationship discourse constructed home visiting as an opportunity to forge long-term relationships that benefit both parties. At times, these two discourses created tension for home visitors. Examining how the home visiting service is described by the service organisation online explains these tensions. The online materials construct active older volunteers as providing professional services, while those they visit are constructed as receiving friendship. These discourses provide different ageing identities for visitors from those they visit, which contributes to the difficulties in navigating home visiting services. Addressing these tensions will enable service co-ordinators to better meet the needs of both visitors and clients in the context of increasing need for such services. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-180323207 A |
| Classmark | QV: NP: DS: TOA: 3DP: 7YN |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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