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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CECILIA AND HANNAH 7
East London Helper service
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVV57Xy6whM&
THANK YOUFOR YOUR TIME