How Older Residents Benefit from the Management of Volunteer Service

Abstract

To help volunteer service users effectively, management of the service is supposedly necessary to screen, train, and deploy volunteers and monitor their work. The management is therefore likely to account for the effectiveness of the use of volunteer service by ensuring the provision of the quantity and quality of direct volunteer service to achieve the service goal. This expected account is the focus of the present study of the contribution of a community volunteer project to older residents' adaptation to the living environment in Hong Kong, China. Survey data obtained from 193 residents targeted by the project show that the adequacy of management of the volunteer project tended to be responsible for the resident's adaptation. Essentially, management adequacy contributed to the resident's adaptation by raising the adequacy of direct volunteer service provision. Moreover, a resident who used the volunteer service more frequently would find volunteer service management and provision more adequate. This link to adequacy represented the way that the volunteer service promoted the resident's adaptation. Results demonstrate the importance of adequacy in volunteer service management for ensuring the provision of effective services to raise the resident's adaptation.