Raising the profile of palliative care services for BAME groups within Leicester city: Challenges with recruiting and training volunteers

Abstract

The Broadening Horizons (BH) project in Leicester UK found that, for members of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Communities, a key obstacle to accessing hospice support was a lack of knowledge of the hospice and hospice services. In its second phase the project aimed to address this issue by recruiting and training volunteers from within these communities to provide information about the local hospice and palliative care. This paper presents an account of the complexities of recruiting and training these volunteers. These complexities included the concept of volunteering, the challenges of ensuring in-depth training to provide lay workers from BAME communities with knowledge of palliative care and hospice services, and the fragmented local service delivery. Over a two-year period and despite many challenges, volunteers made contact with over 3000 people at events in Leicester and considered they engaged in something of great importance to their communities.