Volunteer Assistance in the Treatment of Chronic Alcoholism^*

Abstract

Chronic alcoholics often have great difficulty in adjusting their lifestyle to accommodate the goals agreed upon in treatment. A 16-week behavioral self-management program, which emphasized creating lifestyle changes in the community, was offered to 193 clients. To assist in the process of treatment delivery, half of the clients were offered the support of trained community volunteers during the treatment program. To give volunteers a time period in which to to meet and start working with their clients, only those clients who completed at least the first 4 weeks of the 16-week program (N = 106) were included in the evaluation. Independent follow-up was conducted over a 12-month period. A significant reduction in alcohol consumption was found for clients of both the volunteer-support (VS; N = 52) and the office-based (OB; N = 54) groups; this reduction was maintained over the 12 months of review, with no major differences found between groups. Volunteers rated high on particular characteristics assisted the client more effectively during treatment than those rated low. The variability in hours spent between volunteer-client pairs appeared to mask any main effects, and also the length of the contact period with the volunteer was too short. It is recommended that the use of volunteers be evaluated further by extending the client contact time into the follow-up period.

A randomized trial of Volunteer Recovery Support for Adolescents (VRSA) following residential treatment discharge

“…Consistent with other research in the substance use treatment field (Boyd et al, 2005;Dembo et al, 2002;Garner et al, 2014;Grant, Ernst, Pagaliluan, & Streissguth, 2003;Leigh et al, 1999), results from the present study demonstrate that volunteers can be successfully trained and supervised to implement a recovery support intervention for adolescents. Volunteers initiated recovery support within 14 days of residential discharge for 63% of participants.…”

“…Similarly, studies of volunteers suggest that they can contribute to the enhancement of treatment and long-term recovery outcomes (Bassuk, Hanson, Greene, Molly, & Laudet, 2016;Reif et al, 2014). Volunteer service to others in mutual support groups has also been associated with increased engagement with treatment, improved treatment retention, and/or decreased alcohol and other drug use (Boyd et al, 2005;Dembo, Wothke, Livingston, & Schmeidler, 2002;Grant, Ernst, Streissguth, Phipps, & Gendler, 1996;Lee, Pagano, Johnson, & Post, 2016;Leigh, Hodgins, Milne, & Gerrish, 1999;Pagano, Friend, Tonigan, & Stout, 2004;Stahler et al, 2007;Zemore, Kaskutas, & Ammon, 2004). Additional detailed background and description of volunteers in substance use care is provided in a companion paper (Passetti et al, under review).…”

Improving Community Health Workers’ Attitudes toward Collaborative Practice in the Care of Older Adults: An In-Service Training Intervention Trial in the Philippines

“…Primary health care is an essential health service and is considered one of the cornerstones of universal health coverage [ 16 ], considering the role played by community health workers (CHWs) as community navigators, education providers, or as outreach agents [ 17 ]. Health care services in the Philippines are provided by a small number of health professionals (physicians, nurses, midwives, dentists, and sanitary inspectors) [ 18 ], and community health workers (CHWs) comprise the majority of each city’s human resource for health.…”

“…Studies on interprofessional education (IPE) interventions have reported positive outcomes, including changes in learner perceptions/attitudes toward IPC and the value of collaboratively working with healthcare teams [ 16 , 17 ]. Though IPE and IPC improve cohesion and collaborative work within healthcare teams, the existence of soloing between different personnel, organizations, and care settings restricts formal IPC implementation [ 21 ].…”

The Volunteer Recovery Support for Adolescents (VRSA) experiment: Recruiting, retaining, training, and supervising volunteers to implement recovery monitoring and support services

“…Results indicate that volunteers can help increase treatment seeking, improve treatment retention, and improve posttreatment recovery outcomes. Of note, this research demonstrates that volunteers can be trained to provide a wide range of services, including those based in Motivational Enhancement Therapy principles (Boyd et al, 2005), family empowerment (Dembo, Wothke, Livingston, & Schmeidler, 2002), enhanced case management (Grant, Ernst, Streissguth, Phipps, & Gendler, 1996), and behavioral self-management (Leigh, Hodgins, Milne, & Gerrish, 1999). While there are potential benefits to adolescents for volunteers to be in recovery themselves (i.e., mutual identification, elicitation of hope, recovery rolemodeling, and linkage to recovery community resources), initial research suggests that student volunteers not in recovery are capable of providing effective support services (Garner, Godley, Passetti, Funk, & White, 2014), a finding that may be useful in situations in which recovering peers are not readily available.…”