THE MARIE CURIE HELPER SERVICE

MEASURING THE IMPACT OF VOLUNTEERING

Ruth Bravery, Director of Community Involvement

20 March 2014

WHAT IS THE MARIE CURIE HELPER SERVICE?

Service Aims:

• Meet the emotional support needs of terminally ill people, and those of their carers

• Enable carers to cope better and continue in caring role

• Reduce social isolation

• Support people to live well through the terminal phase of their illness

“I felt guilty at first, admitting I couldn’t cope. But the nurse convinced me, she said if I

was depressed I wouldn’t be as much help to my husband as if I allowed myself a break.”

Carer, Nottingham

Service structure

One service manager per locality

• 60 trained volunteers

• Up to 100 clients

• 1 service administrator

Service areas:

• Active in 5 areas

• In development in 3 areas

• Rolling out to 3 further areas in

2014/15

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Volunteer-delivered service, supporting people with any terminal

illness or those caring for them.

BENEFITS OF THE MARIE CURIE HELPER SERVICE

• Respite support for carers

• Accompanied visits to:

– The shops

– Visit spouse in hospice

– Hospital and GP appointments

– Receive welfare benefits advice

• Companionship

• Information giving

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She’s actually taken me shopping once and she took me to

hospital and it’s lovely because I feel independent. You know, you

just feel like you’re going with a pal.

Terminally ill person, Nottingham

I don’t like the prospect of having suddenly to come to

terms with the fact that I may be dying and to have

somebody intelligent and sympathetic to chat about these

things is a great help.

Terminally ill person, Somerset

EVALUATION 4

Ipsos MORI Qualitative Evaluation of the Helper service, April 2012

Designed to support the wider internal evaluation of the service

Explored:

• The service aims

• Benefits and factors for success

• Understanding and expectations for the service

• Service delivery

• Challenges facing the service

• The future development of the service

Depth interviews and focus groups with service users, volunteers,

referrers and Marie Curie staff

EVALUATION FINDINGS 5

Ipsos MORI Qualitative Evaluation of the Helper service, April

2012

• Primary aim as ‘emotional support’

• Key benefits:

- Outlet for thoughts and feelings

- Someone different to talk to

- Companionship

- Sense of independence

- Respite for carer

- Practical support

- Signposting to other services

• Overall ‘positive effect on emotional wellbeing’, making life ‘a little bit

easier’

• Evaluation also explored reasons for success, assessed service

delivery, identified challenges and areas for development, and made

recommendations.

BUT HOW DO WE ROUTINELY MEASURE OR MONITOR IMPACT?

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Let’s take client well-being as an example…

• Qualitative interviews are not practical on an on-going basis

• For quantitative measures, we need to decide:

• Which measure to use (standardised vs bespoke)

• How often to measure it (to understand change over time)

• What success looks like (what might have happened otherwise)

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Before 6 weeks 12 weeks

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general population

CECILIA AND HANNAH 7

East London Helper service

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVV57Xy6whM&

THANK YOUFOR YOUR TIME