Volunteers are an important component of hospice programs. They perform a variety of functions which are an essential part of the multi-dimensional approach to care. This study examined hospice volunteers' characteristics, motivations, preparedness, performance, satisfaction, and attitudes toward death. The volunteers were relatively young, well educated, in good health, and had a wide range of family incomes. They were motivated by their religious beliefs and personal experiences, and they saw their role as instrumental to the functioning of the program. After a training program, nearly two-thirds felt completely prepared for their jobs, and after some on-the-job experience, 86 percent felt capable of performing all of their duties. They were very satisfied with volunteering, but were most satisfied with assignments which involved direct contact with patients and families and with work in the hospital. They had a strong belief in life after death, and felt that grief and mourning rituals were very important.

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Family violence exists throughout society and, unfortunately, also among military families. The Air Force's Family Advocacy Program is designed not only to treat victims, offenders, and families of abuse and neglect, but also to provide prevention services. Each Air Force base has a Family Advocacy Officer, who is a credentialed clinical social worker, charged with the duty of addressing spouse abuse and child maltreatment problems. To evaluate the effectiveness of current services, and to improve the quality of the services provided through the Family Advocacy Program, the Air Force is currently conducting a 4-year evaluation study. This research represents the largest study ever conducted on family violence, with either military or civilian offenders. This paper, based upon the first year of data collected at approximately one-third of all Air Force medical treatment facilities, reported on the descriptive characteristics of the substantiated cases of spouse abuse and child abuse/neglect, and the interventions which were being recommended to alleviate the abusive situations and to prevent future maltreatment. The results will guide policy and future manning and staffing decisions for the Air Force Family Advocacy Program, and serve to document the kinds of treatment strategies which work most effectively for which kinds of problems. Findings are expected to help improve the quality of services to victims, offenders, and families, and to do so for those who are civilians as well as for those who are in the military.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Family conflict and the lack of family cohesion are believed to set a foundation for coercive interactions that increase the likelihood of child abuse. The present study investigated the relationship between the family social environment (Family Environment Scale and Index of Marital Satisfaction) and physical child abuse potential (Child Abuse Potential Inventory) in maltreating (n= 376) and comparison (n = 148) parents. As expected, the strongest positive relationship was between family conflict and abuse potential. The strongest inverse relationships were between family cohesion, family expressiveness, marital satisfaction, and abuse scores, which indicates that the lack of positive interactional patterns is related to abuse potential. However, regression analysis revealed that family interactional patterns did not account for the majority of variance in abuse potential.