Description

Based on a two-year project investigating some of the challenges facing people with mental health problems in accessing volunteering opportunities, this guide provides support and advice for people committed to making their organizations more socially inclusive and including individuals with mental health problems as volunteers.

Changing organizational behavior doesn’t happen overnight – but it can happen if you provide practical information, real life accounts, resources and ideas that give individuals and organizations a safe, uncritical environment to examine both personal attitudes and beliefs and organizational policies and practices. This book has been designed with this particular aim in mind. Published in the UK by The National Centre for Volunteering in 2003, the concepts and advice are universal.

Table of Contents

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Readers' Reviews

By showing that the skills and expertise of people with mental health problems as volunteers can be accessed with a level of support that is not substantially different from that required by any other volunteer, this publication makes a fresh and important contribution to our thinking on social inclusion in an area of civic life which has received little attention to date.

—David Morris, Head of Social Inclusion Programme, National Institute for Mental Health in England

 

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Brief Excerpt

Supported Volunteering
This publication primarily focuses attention on practical ways to enable people with experience of mental ill health to access the same opportunities to volunteer that any other citizen enjoys. The main difference between providing support for people with mental health problems and other volunteers is one of degree rather than type, so successful supported volunteering can take place both within the context of ‘specialist’ supported volunteering projects and as an integral part of mainstream volunteer programmes. These are not either/or alternatives – the ultimate goal is to enable anyone who wishes to, to volunteer.

Models of successful supported volunteering take a variety of forms. They may be:

• community bridge builders who act as links between potential volunteers and volunteer-involving organisations
• specialist supported volunteering projects employing dedicated staff that run within a volunteer agency such as a volunteer bureau
• dedicated ‘supported volunteering’ staff who work within mainstream organizations

Regardless of the form they take, all models have one common denominator – dedicated resources that are earmarked for inclusion. (pages 16-17)

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