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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Pilot study of a visitor volunteer programme for community elderly people receiving home health care | | Author(s) | Irene MacIntyre, Pat Corradetti, Jacqueline Roberts |
| Journal title | Health & Social Care in the Community, vol 7, no 3, May 1999 |
| Pages | pp 225-232 |
| Keywords | Visiting ; Voluntary workers ; Emotions ; Living in the community ; Pilot ; Canada. |
| Annotation | There is a need to evaluate community support programmes for older people. In this randomised control trial (RCT), the authors determined the effectiveness of "friendly visitors" in a volunteer programme of a visiting nurses organisation in Southern Ontario, Canada. The Voluntary Friendly Visitor Programme was developed to support older people receiving home-making and nursing care in the community. Volunteers are screened, trained, interviewed and matched to housebound clients for general interest, visit expectations and personality. Volunteers spend an average 3-4 hours per week with clients socialising in mutually agreed-upon ways. The nursing staff identified those who were lonely for this additional support. These newly-referred clients were randomly allocated to receive a friendly visitor or not for 6 weeks. Those receiving the volunteer visitor improved in life satisfaction and two social support measures: worth and social integration. Thus, the addition of volunteer visitors to planned home-making and nursing care made a difference for older people in the community. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990607005 A |
| Classmark | NP: QV: DL: K4: 4UC: 7S |
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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