VOLUNTARY SOCIAL SERVICE

HL Deb 09 February 1972 vol 327 cc1143-57

3.5 p.m.

VISCOUNT YOUNGER of LECKIE rose to call attention to the continuing need for voluntary social service in the community, and to the conditions necessary for its success; and to move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I had thought of starting by trying to define the term "voluntary social service", but with such a large number of speakers I think it will probably define itself as we go along. In any case, one of the encouraging things about voluntary service is that it is always changing. We inevitably work ourselves out of a job from time to time when some of our services are taken over, possibly by the State; but while we do that in one direction we usually manage to branch out in some new direction instead. I had hoped that my noble friend Lord Hunt would be with us to-day and I see his name on the list, though I fear he may not turn up. He assures me that he has on the agenda a number of new types of projects for voluntary service which he would have told us about and which I have no doubt noble Lords can learn about from him if they are interested.

There have recently been great developments in the use of community service in the environment, which will probably be dealt with by later speakers, and there have also been what I believe are sometimes called self-help ventures; that is, where one type of social casualty is used to help in dealing with another, I do not know whether any of your Lordships saw a television programme on Sunday night (it may have been only in Scotland) which showed a camp for handicapped children, run in Scotland and largely staffed by selected borstal boys. It had been a very great success. But, of course, it was very well supervised and carefully planned. That shows that it is not much good trying to define voluntary service within narrow limits; it will always ooze out in a new direction. For the same reason, I cannot hope to cover the whole field in my opening remarks, except perhaps by superficial references, and I must rely on the formidable list of speakers to follow to fill in the gaps with some more interesting material.

The timing of this Motion is partly a result of discussions which I had quite a long time ago with the late Lady Reading, not long before she died. She had, of course, foreseen that the big expansion of health and social services which was in prospect was bound to produce a testing time for the voluntary services, but she thought that it would be better to put off a discussion on the subject until the pattern of expansion became rather clearer; and although she is, alas! no longer with us, the influence of her thinking is still very much alive among the many people who used to take advice from her. So my noble friend Lady Hylton-Foster and I thought that the time is now opportune, when the pattern of change is pretty clear and when implementation in the local government sphere is actually under way.

When I have discussed this matter with numerous organisations as I have gone around, I have received one impression which I did not really expect. It is that many people, on both the official and the voluntary side, underestimate the complexity and the size of this problem of voluntary service, and in particular the difficulty of converting agreement at the centre into really effective co-operation at local level, where it matters. It is not merely that voluntary services are so numerous, but also that they show such a bewildering variety of size, of effectiveness and of geographical distribution. For the same reason, generalisation about them is rather dangerous, but I think it is important to remember that certainly most of the established organisations perform one or more of three quite distinct roles.

The first role is fund-raising—sometimes for research, sometimes for general purposes. The second is the pioneering of new ideas—and historically I should think that this is their most important contribution to the improvement of our society over the years. After all, many of our statutory services were started by volunteers, sometimes as experiments and sometimes purely as pressure groups. It is idle to pretend that these experiments and these pressure groups have always been popular in official circles. I daresay they are not even now because, of course, this is not a thing of the past, and if anyone doubts that, he has only to look at the recent record of the Disablement Incomes Group, on the one hand, or of Shelter, on the other. But it is usually essential, especially if you are going to be a pressure group, to have at least some financial independence, otherwise your pressure may not reach the required standard. For both those roles—that is to say the fundraising role and the pioneering role—I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that it is normally essential to establish a properly constituted society. The individual cannot make much of a job of either of those roles on his own.

The third role, which is rather a different one, consists of the more familiar one of welfare work or leadership work carried out locally by volunteers, who can be members either of a national organisation or of a local group, or indeed can be simply enthusiastic individuals. It is this role, the third role, which must sometimes appear so untidy to the official mind, and I shall deal with this point more in the second part of my Motion. The work that is done is sometimes untrained work and sometimes work requiring considerable training. The work, for instance, in the delinquency field is bound to require much more careful selection than the ordinary good-neighbour work, where anybody with common sense and a little knowledge of the official services can do a most useful job, particularly to cure loneliness.

The first part of this Motion calls for agreement that there is a continuing need for voluntary social service in our community. Most people probably accept this in principle, and in particular there is wide recognition of the great value of community involvement in the working of the social services. One hopes that, among other things, it may help to close that awful gap between "them" and "us", about which we are all a little worried in our reorganisation of both local government and the local health services. In practice, however, I do not think we can quite take recognition of this need for granted, because I suggest that there is some resistance to the use of volunteers which is still coming from two particular directions. First, there is some doubt in public opinion, part of which feels that the expansion of the statutory services makes the use of volunteers unnecessary. Unfortunately this is, in my experience, not uncommon in the elected members of local authorities. While one can quite understand the reasons for it, I think that they are wrong and that our experience in the Health Service, for instance, over the last twenty years shows that very clearly. If anything has been proved by that experience, surely it is that the better the services you produce the more new horizons you open up and the more demand there is on scarce manpower to fill them.

The second objection comes from the young professional social worker. One can understand that, too, because he is newly qualified and naturally thinks he knows all the answers, and I am afraid that the enthusiastic amateur can sometimes be a somewhat uncomfortable colleague. This can be overcome, but definite action is required. In particular, Governments can help to improve the training syllabus for young social workers to try to get them to understand how the voluntary system works and both the capabilities and the restrictions under which voluntary societies function.

If this opposition in principle can be overcome, we are still left with the second part of my Motion; that is to say, how to create conditions in which volunteers can be successfully used at the local level. It is the urgency of this problem which we think justifies having a debate on the subject just now. Most of us in this House must realise what an enormous task we have set the health and social services by reorganising, at almost the same time, the structure of local government, the social work departments and the local health services. I am bound to say that, going round and meeting a number of directors of social work, I have been very impressed with their quality and the way in which they are tackling this really very sticky assignment. Like everything in local government, it is much stickier in some areas than in others, and where they are taking over from a really efficient authority their difficulties are not so great. But what we have to think of in our administrative work is how we can bring up the standard of the less good ones to the standard of the best, which always has been the trouble.

A good example of the sort of difficulty which they face perhaps came out in May last year, in the debate in this House on the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, which unfortunately I could not attend but which I read. Incidentally, the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, asked me to say how sorry she is at not being able to take part in to-day's debate as she is abroad. I think the earlier debate is very well known to your Lordships, and the points which came out of it were very clear. It is perhaps surprising, if it is the case—and I got this impression—that not very much effort had been made to get the existing information, for instance on the register of disabled people, from the existing disablement organisations, which are legion in number. I saw a pamphlet produced by the Council of Social Service in Edinburgh along with the Corporation, in which I thought I identified very nearly fifty different societies of one sort or another which dealt with mental health and physical handicaps. There must be a great store of information there, and it would be a great pity if it is not used now, when time is so important and when it could provide such a good starting point for the work of social work departments.

Perhaps at this stage I should explain that my interest in that subject is due to the fact that I have been a member of the Multiple Sclerosis Society since it was founded almost 20 years ago, and that Society of course is primarily interested in disabled persons in general, and in the young chronic sick in particular. Our experience indicates that the needs of a young family with one seriously disabled parent are very long-term needs. They go on for years and years and are of an infinite variety, and I cannot foresee the time when even the most dedicated social work department will be able to do all that work themselves. There is therefore a great challenge and a great opportunity for volunteers to play a major part in the new services. But I think we should ask ourselvess: what can we in the voluntary services do to make this easier? I hope that other speakers will let us have some suggestions on this aspect, but it seems to me that perhaps the greatest need is for better communication between officials and volunteers, not so much at national level, which is quite easy, but on the ground.

I also believe that the time has now come when the voluntary societies must try to establish some rather better coordination among themselves. Local volunteers are not always very keen on this, and in particular, very naturally, are afraid of being over-organised if only because they have little, if any, paid staff to cope with it. That is why it is so important that we in the voluntary societies should ourselves try to get some co-ordination at local level, rather than wait until some official body comes in and does it for us. Good work is already being done by the National Council of Social Service and others in the larger centres to provide a clearing house for information and for volunteers. Can we not try to extend some similar sort of system throughout the country, perhaps using whichever organisation in the locality is the strongest for the purpose? Another urgent need is to spread volunteers more evenly. Can the larger societies, in particular, do some missionary work where their local organisation is a little weak?

This raises the final question: can we recruit enough new volunteers for the extra work to be done? I hope that subsequent speakers will tell us something about that aspect, too. Are we, for instance, doing enough to make it possible for women in the 25 to 40 age group to take on this sort of work, perhaps when they have a part-time job as well? Are we making enough use of men, those very lazy social workers who are inclined to leave it all to the ladies? Many of them retire comparatively young nowadays. I think there is a big source of useful people in that group who would be particularly useful in dealing with disabled as well as old men. Finally, are we making enough use of the young, and are we giving them the most suitable jobs to do? It is obvious that they have a great urge to help. They are the volunteers on whom we are going to rely in the future; but we must not sicken them with jobs which neither tax their physical skills nor fire their enthusiasm.

Then there is the rather more controversial question of the direct recruitment of individual volunteers by the statutory services. Later speakers will probably tell us a little about this in connection with the hospital service scheme, and I am sure that we shall be most interested to hear what is happening in that field. So far as I know, it has not been seriously suggested (although I may not know about it) that similar direct recruitment should be used for the personal services of the local authorities. I think that that should be looked at very carefully before it becomes official policy. It is causing a certain amount of misgiving among voluntary societies, because we have found that inevitably, where domiciliary work is involved, there is much less supervision than there is in an institution or in a hospital. The work of placing, replacing, training and selecting volunteers for domiciliary work is a very time-consuming, and sometimes a rather invidious, one when one has to start taking square pegs out of round holes. I think that if this work is taken over on a statutory basis it will be found to be very expensive in time.

To sum up, my Lords, if volunteers are to play their full part in the great extension of the health and social ser- vices which is now taking place, a combined and continuing operation is required to improve communications and co-operation. We must try to do this in such a way that the pioneering spirit and the enthusiasm of volunteers is not submerged in a mass of red tape. I am afraid that we shall not achieve perfection, and we shall always look a little untidy by Civil Service standards, but that must be accepted. But, in turn, we must rely on Governments to keep up the pressure on both central and local Government to make use of volunteers when they are available, and also to encourage young professional social workers to accept volunteers as colleagues and to understand how they can be used. All of us have the same objective here: to improve the quality of our social life by raising the standards of the handicapped families more nearly to our own. In trying to achieve that objective, I hope we shall never lack volunteers for social service in the community. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.28 p.m.

BARONESS SEROTA

My Lords, I am sure the whole House will be grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, for the very well-timed opportunity that his Motion gives us to-day to consider and discuss some of the major issues involved in developing voluntary service in the context of contemporary society, and against the changing framework of the great national statutory and voluntary social services which, as he so rightly reminded us, have evolved over time from the great pioneering efforts of Victorian philanthropic groups and individual social reformers. This debate also gives us the very welcome opportunity of hearing for the first time from the noble Lord, Lord Gainford. I wish him every success on what can be a very testing occasion. I am sure he will know that the feelings of the House are with him.

Those of us who believe that the maximum involvement and participation of individuals and groups at all levels in the community in the planning, organisation and provision of responsive social services is an absolutely basic feature of a truly democratic society, certainly do not question the continuing need for voluntary service in its many and various forms, from modest yet informal acts of genuine "good neighbourliness", to which the noble Viscount referred, to membership of elected or appointed statutory bodies or independent voluntary organisations. Indeed, since the whole community, either directly or indirectly, pays for and at some time or other actually consumes the services, it is essential that we develop and extend rather than restrict the opportunities for active and effective participation. At the same time, we must also recognise that, as well as acting as providers of services in cooperation with professionals, volunteers have a major role to play as community educators and opinion leaders, however awkward this might be at times when articulate pressure groups challenge established practices and policies.

My Lords, I intend to concentrate my remarks to-day on the second part of the noble Viscount's Motion, and to confine myself to considering ways and means of assisting and improving the contribution of the volunteer to the progressive development of the health and personal social services, especially since there are so many noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have indicated their intention to speak in this debate to-day, and will undoubtedly be covering a wide range of issues, including the improvement of the environment, and voluntary service by young people, including, I hope, service with minority groups.

At this moment of time, like the noble Viscount, I, too, wish that Lady Swan-borough were here with us to-day. I shall always remember with deep affection and gratitude the help and support she so readily gave to us all. Her clear recognition and acceptance of the fact that the whole shape of voluntary service has changed was the keynote, and I believe the success, of her vigorous leadership of the Women's Voluntary Service, which enabled the movement to experiment and to develop new forms of social service in a rapidly changing situation. When, my Lords, she wrote in her booklet, which many of us received after her death: This is the age of participation of the thoughtful, trained and prepared individual", I believe she went to the very heart of the matter.

Obviously the volunteer supplies most of the man and woman power for most voluntary organisations, but in recent years the volunteer has been found working directly in the public services, and is increasingly eager to do so. The initiative of, for example, the Probation and After-Care Service and the most remarkable growth of voluntary service in hospitals (both of which I am sure will be referred to in some detail during this debate to-day) amply demonstrate this development. The Seebohm Report, too, stressed the need for the new local authority social services departments it recommended to extend and deepen their work by using volunteers to increase community involvement and community participation. In this context, I should like to welcome the clear and definitive statement of principle by the Government in the recent circular issued by the Department of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on voluntary help in hospitals and the appointment of voluntary help organisers—a statement which, in my view, applies equally to the local authority social services departments—namely, that volunteers give a variety of services to complement the work of paid staff, and should not be regarded as a means of diminishing the effect of staff shortage or filling gaps in the service that should properly be filled by paid staff". I also warmly welcome the reference in the circular to the important role of the volunteer in providing an extra and much-needed link between hospital and local authority care.

The circular brings together the accumulated experience of the valuable and long-standing efforts of many great national bodies which are household names—the British Red Cross Society, the St. John Ambulance Brigade, the National Association of Leagues of Hospital Friends, the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, the National Association of Mental Health, to mention but a few; and the hundreds of smaller groups which operate up and down the country in their particular localities. It also, I believe, owes an immense debt to the excellent stimulus provided in recent years by the King Edward's Hospital Fund Hospital Centre, whose publications on Volunteers in Hospitals and Organisers of Voluntary Service in Hospitals, and the very clear and practical pamphlets that it issues giving advice and guidance on how to develop and sustain different aspects of voluntary help in hospitals, have fulfilled a nationwide need for information, advice and encouragement to all those who are concerned to widen the use of volunteers in hospitals. Moreover, by providing some preliminary training facilities for newly appointed organisers, especially during this very welcome, recent, rapid growth of such appointments, particularly in the long-stay hospitals, the King's Fund, under the able chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, has continued its long-standing role of encouraging and assisting new developments to improve the general quality of health care in the hospital service.

My Lords, I am very conscious that the great national bodies, some of which I have already mentioned, and their local organisations—not forgetting the younger and sometimes more transient bodies that are developing up and down the country—have already reconsidered, or are in process of seriously reconsidering, their aims and methods for the recruitment and guidance of volunteers. They clearly see the need to widen the range beyond the traditional, middle-aged and middle-class image to all sections of the community. They see the need to plan schemes for preparation and training better geared to current requirements, and to improve their organisation so that volunteers feel satisfied that the best use is being made of their services. Indeed, new ideas and experiments are to be met with all over the country. The questions for us to-day are: how can this experience be shared? How can their impact become more generally felt? And how can these very rich reserves of experience be made available to others? That is the central issue to which I want to address my remarks.

The same is true for local authorities which carry such a heavy burden for our social services. I am not sure that I fully agree with the noble Viscount in his comments about the attitude of some local authorities, but attitudes do vary in different parts of the country. I would only say that I believe they are now increasingly recognising that they have two major tasks in the voluntary field. The first is to develop effective liaison with existing voluntary organisations in their areas, and to this end some have already appointed voluntary liaison officers. The second, which is perhaps more relevant to my particular concern to-day, is to devise arrangements that will ensure a wise and effective use of those volunteers who offer direct service to the authority, so that they in fact increase the depth and coverage of the personal social services in the ways that the Seebohm Committee envisaged. Moreover, I believe it is absolutely essential that volunteers must be encouraged to preserve their particular qualities of independence of thought and action while fitting into a statutory framework—and this, as all know, is certainly no simple matter. The major concern of the professional full-time social worker staff, of whom local authorities are now the major employers, is how to maintain and improve standards of service. How to do this while involving volunteers more closely in their work is certainly no simple matter, and I believe that the relationship between the professional and the amateur in this developing field is one that clearly requires very careful thought and study in depth. The same is true for the increasing number of tutors and teachers who are helping to direct thought to these issues.

My Lords, it is for all these reasons that the time has come for the establishment of a new central independent service to assist volunteers to operate more effectively when working as individuals or in groups or as members of organisations, and to assist the health and social services to utilise this resource to the full. Noble Lords who follow these matters closely may recall one of the recommendations of the valuable Report of the Aves Committee, which was set tip in 1966 by the National Council of Social Service and the National Institute of Social Work Training. That recommendation advocated the setting up of a national body, financed initially from public funds, to be responsible for all aspects of the work of volunteers. Since that Report was published in 1969, much discussion has of course taken place over the shape and role of such a centre. Fears were expressed in some quarters about the dangers of yet another voluntary body undertaking activities which might be carried out by existing ones. It also became clear that to establish such a centre under the aegis of any one established organisation might also jeopardise the fulfilment of the objective in the sense that it might not be seen on all sides as a truly independent centre to which all had direct and free access.

The House may be interested to know that, bearing in mind these views, a small group of individuals have now come together, each acting in a personal capacity but representing between them a wide range of experience in the Health Service, the local authority social services, the voluntary movements and independent foundations, in order to consider and to recommend the measures needed to establish an independent volunteer centre whose purpose would be to serve as a stimulating focus for all that concerns voluntary service in the health and social services. I have given the noble Earl and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, the names of this small independent Working Party, but shall not take up your Lordships' time by listing them now.

We envisage that the centre should concentrate on helping identify the needs in the main areas of concern and on exploring ways and means of meeting those needs. Briefly, the initial aims would be to collect and to disseminate information about the recruitment, use and training of volunteers in the health and social services, both statutory and voluntary; to encourage and promote, in consultation with the appropriate training agencies, schemes for the preparation and training of volunteers, organisers of voluntary help and the staff of the services which use volunteers; and, thirdly, to encourage and promote the study, research and development of work by volunteers either as individuals or in groups or as members of organisations. It may he that as the work progresses other aims and priorities will emerge as being more important. Such a centre will need to be flexible in its organisation and approach and be prepared to adapt its aims and objectives to the changing needs as the services themselves evolve in time. We see it as having charitable status and the preparation of outline proposals for a possible constitution and sources of finance, in the first instance for an experimental period of five years, are now fairly well advanced on the basis of establishing a modest organisation but one which I hope would be high in quality.

Perhaps I should make it clear that the volunteer centre that we envisage would not itself seek to undertake work that is already being done by other organisations but clearly would be expected to work closely with and draw much strength from related interests and notably, in the first instance, with the hospital centre, and other professional, voluntary and statutory organisations with a leading interest in working with volunteers in this field. It would not itself undertake executive functions in the carrying out of services, but as I have already indicated it would be able to offer information, encouragement and advice, if desired, to statutory and voluntary organisations of all kinds that have this responsibility and it would promote further study of the issues involved, that are seen to require this.

The promotional group which I have agreed to chair on a short-term basis in order to assist in the establishment of what I believe to be a much-needed service if we are to further the effective use of volunteers intends to formulate its proposals by the end of this month. In a sense, the noble Viscount's Motion has made us "jump the gun" as it had not really been our intention to make our existence public until then had it not been for the occasion of this debate. We hope shortly to be in a position to have discussions with those bodies most closely concerned about the most rewarding way in which such a volunteer centre could be launched. In the meantime, it would he most helpful and encouraging if the Government could indicate their reaction to this project at this stage. I realise that there can be no firm commitment until the proposals are more fully developed and reactions are received from the bodies most closely concerned. But I have always seen this as a project, as a truly co-operative effort involving the major basic interests, the voluntary movement, Health Service authorities, social service authorities, and professional organisations, with the Government giving both moral and financial support at least during the initial stage of its development.

Finally, since there is no division between us now on the principle that the State, both centrally and locally, should provide high standards of health and social care as of right for all its citizens and the voluntary organisations and volunteers should not undertake the responsibilities of the statutory services and professional staff, our major concern, which surely should unite us all to-day and one which goes right across Party is, as the noble Viscount reminded us, to assist voluntary service to develop vigorously and effectively in order to broaden the participation of all sections of our society and to enrich the quality of the services offered. It is in this spirit that I hope the House and the Government will accept the project that I have put forward to them to-day.