The boundaries of care work: a comparative study of professionals and volunteers in Denmark and Australia

Abstract

This paper explores the manner in which two hospices--one located in Denmark and one in Australia--negotiate and determine the boundaries of volunteer workers vis-à-vis paid staff. A comparative case study approach was used to juxtapose organisations with similar activity fields located in different welfare state systems, i.e. a social democratic welfare state and a liberal welfare state. This study involved non-participant observation of volunteers at work and unstructured interviews with volunteers, staff and management in the hospices (n = 41). Data were collected between August 2012 and February 2013. Data were managed using NVivo and analysed thematically. A key finding is that volunteers in the Danish hospice were excluded from all direct care work due to the effective monopoly of the professional care providers, whereas the Australian volunteers participated in the provision of care to the extent that risk could be eliminated or mitigated to an acceptable level. The findings suggest two different models of the roles of volunteers in tension with professional care providers. Both models recognise that volunteers add to the level of care delivered by the organisations and allow for a discussion that moves away from the normative discussions of 'not taking somebody's job', while also recognising that volunteers must be more than just the 'nice extra' if they are to be of any real value to the organisation and to care receivers.

Moving Away, Toward, and Against: How Front-line Workers Cope with Substitution by Volunteers in Dutch Care and Welfare Services

“…The collaboration between front-line workers and volunteers is somewhat understudied, both in research on volunteering (Wilson, 2012), and in the sociology of professions (Saks and Van Bochove, forthcoming). Various scholars have explored the boundaries between volunteering and paid work (e.g., Hoad, 2002; Merrell, 2000; Overgaard, 2015; Van Bochove et al , 2016). Their studies showed that these boundaries were clear regarding care provision, such as washing or dressing clients in a nursing home, but that there were also ‘grey areas’ in which it was unclear whether a volunteer was allowed to take over a certain task or not.…”

“…Unpaid workers such as volunteers are increasingly not only expected to provide a little ‘extra’ on top of professional work (Handy and Srinivasan, 2005), but also to take over parts of professional work (Baines, 2004; Van Bochove et al , 2016; Hoad, 2002). Although cross-national (Overgaard, 2015) and cross-sector (Van Bochove et al , 2016) differences exist, a trend of ‘volunteer responsibilisation’ for such tasks is observed in a range of countries, including Germany and Italy (Komp et al , 2013; Muehlebach, 2012), Scandinavian countries (Lorentzen and Henriksen, 2014), the UK (Hardill and Baines, 2011), the Netherlands (Verhoeven and Tonkens, 2013), Canada (Baines, 2004; Elson, 2009) and Australia (Johansson et al , 2012). Much has been written on the potential threats of New Public Management (NPM) strategies (Duyvendak et al , 2006; Evetts, 2011; Harington and Bedoe, 2014; Noordegraaf, 2006; Sirotkina and van Ewijk, 2009) and ‘proto-professionalisation’ of clients (Dent, 2006; De Swaan, 1988) for professionalism.…”

Institutional Work in Changing Public Service Organizations: The Interplay Between Professionalization Strategies of Non-Elite Actors

“…Likewise, professional rhetoric and talk can be strategically used by actors “to influence the direction and pace of change, but also to legitimate or delegitimate the acceptance of a particular program of change” (Suddaby & Viale, 2011, p. 434). Given the shifting boundaries between paid and unpaid staff in many public service organizations across welfare states (Eliasoph, 2011; Overgaard, 2015; Van Bochove et al, 2018), it is particularly relevant to research how organizational change in such organizations is promoted via the enactment of various professionalization strategies.…”

Volunteering Advantages and Difficulties in Romania

“…3. The presence of tensions between volunteers and employees is a known and identified issue in several countries and organizational environments (Bittschi, Pennerstorfer, & Schneider, 2015;Overgaard, 2014). Most often, volunteers are perceived by employees as a threat to the safety of their job or their responsibilities, which can be taken over by volunteers.…”