Abstract
This paper explores the potential contribution of timebanking, an innovative volunteering scheme, to the co-production of preventive social care with adults in England. Interest in volunteering in social care has increased as one proposed solution to the international crisis of a rising demand for services in juxtaposition with decreased resources. Volunteering has been particularly promoted in preventive services that prevent or delay care needs arising. Despite sustained interest in volunteering and co-production in social care, little is known about how theory translates into practice. Reporting implementation data from a Realistic Evaluation of six case studies in England, this paper explores one volunteering scheme, timebanking. The research explores how timebanks were working, what contribution they can make to adult social care, and whether they are an example of co-production. Data collected included interviews, focus groups or open question responses on surveys from 84 timebank members, and semi-structured interviews with 13 timebank staff. Each timebank was visited at least twice, and all timebank activity was analysed for a period of 12months. Data were triangulated to improve reliability. The research found that in practice, timebanks were not working as described in theory, there were small numbers of person-to-person exchanges and some timebanks had abandoned this exchange model. Timebanks faced significant implementation challenges including managing risk and safeguarding and the associated bureaucracy, a paternalistic professional culture and the complexity of the timebank mechanism which required adequate resources. Lessons for timebanks are identified, as well as transferable lessons about co-production and volunteering in social care if such schemes are to be successful in the future.
Highlights
With the likely continued interest in volunteering in social care, and co-production, this paper presents research from 2012–2015 that explored the potential contribution of timebanks and identified transferable future lessons for similar schemes
These findings support those from studies in the USA (Dentzer, 2003; RWJF, 2000) and Japan (Hayashi, 2011; Nakagawa, Laratta, & Bovaird, 2013) that concluded that significant implementation challenges, including difficulties with recruiting active members, the time-consuming complexity of arranging exchanges, and the resulting resource demands, meant that timebanks could not be relied upon to deliver a cost-effective, consistent service in practice
With increasing interest in volunteering in social care, advocates of timebanks claimed they offered a value-added approach creating a co-produced mutual-aid network delivered with reduced resources compared to professionally managed schemes
Summary
This paper explores data about timebank implementation collected during a Realistic Evaluation of timebanks in England (NaughtonDoe, 2015). This paper reports findings relating to timebank implementation from six case studies for the purpose of generating theories about how timebanks were implemented in different contexts and the challenges that they faced. A range of methods were used to explore timebank context and process (see Table 3). Interviews conducted with staff and members were supplemented with observational data and 2.3 | Analysis. Data were first prepared for analysis; sections of interviews with staff and members that were relevant to timebank implementation were transcribed verbatim. Transcriptions, field notes and notes from document analysis were entered onto Nvivo, coded and TA B L E 2 Qualitative research methods used at each case study exploring timebank context and process.
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