This chapter establishes how representative the old people and volunteers were of old people and volunteers in Task Force as a whole. It examines ways of measuring the need for social visiting, as a preliminary to assessing the success of Task Force volunteers. The sample used in the longitudinal survey was a small one including no more than about 4 per cent of the old people Task Force claimed to be visiting at the time. Acomparison of background characteristics and attitudes shows that on most factors the old people in the longitudinal survey and the ‘large’ sample resembled each other very closely. Friends and neighbours do provide a much more extensive network of regular contacts. The simplest way to define the need of old people for social visiting might appear to be in terms of their self-rated loneliness: if a person feels very much alone then surely he needs a visitor more than someone who says he is never lonely.

The longitudinal survey was designed to monitor the relationships between the old people and their volunteers. The only ‘objective’ factors introduced into the classification concerned the length of the relationships, and the procedure for dealing with the few cases where there was evidence that the old people were strongly and consistently distorting their view of the relationship in the interviews. Each of the twenty relationships classified as successful contained unique features but they had at least one factor in common—the fact that in each case they broadened the old person’s network of significant others. In eight relationships the volunteer seemed to take a familial role with the old person. In seven relationships, owing to the physical or mental condition of the old person, the central role of the volunteer became a caring or supportive one. There is a temptation to explain all unsuccessful relationships as due to ‘low’ or ‘weak’ motivation on the part of the volunteer.

This chapter presents the evaluation of Task Force in terms of its provision of an effective service to the elderly. It provides a tentative explanation of the evolution of the managerial processes in Task Force. Two mechanisms for social education were recognised: the discussions and lectures arranged through school or with groups of volunteers outside the school setting, including work with Newsom groups; and the experience of volunteering itself. There are some staff in the organisation who see community action as an alternative and preferable area of activity to either of the other two areas. Three different types of data might be used to evaluate the volunteer’s work: quantitative information on the amount of help given; quantified estimates of some of the basic determinants of the quality of help given; and the much less easily quantified judgements about quality, as for example those based on the old people’s level of satisfaction.

This chapter examines how far the old people known to Task Force fall into the neediest and hard pressed categories. It compares Task Force records of those it was helping with the picture of help received by old people as established in the interviews. Most Task Force clients are found amongst the older sections of the elderly population. The advanced age of Task Force clients probably also explains why a much larger proportion of them was widowed than of the elderly population as a whole. Old age is no respecter of class but the ‘middle classes’ are probably better equipped than the ‘working classes’ to cope with many of its problems. Housing is of particular importance in the life of old people. A strong network of relations and friends can provide psychological and practical support for the old and greatly reduce the need for help from the statutory and voluntary social services.

This chapter provides an introductory sketch of the formal structure of Task Force as it was in late 1970. Task Force was set up to mobilise the work of young volunteers in the service of the old. It is run by a predominantly young staff and its activities are now concentrated in London. In the first three or four years of the history of Task Force the goals of the organisation, as defined by its Director, were primarily service orientated. Anthony Steen’s aim was to help old people who were isolated or lonely and who needed social visiting or practical help of a kind that could be provided by volunteers. The hierarchical structure of Task Force was linked with a traditional approach to authority. The Director, who was sometimes called in business language the ‘managing director’ in early literature on the organisation, was the source of all executive authority.

This chapter tries to establish what kinds of people volunteer to work for Task Force. It explores the question of their motivation. The chapter then examines how the volunteers perceived their experience as volunteers, noting the apparent impact the work had made on them. The two most important categories of volunteers were school volunteers, who totalled 5,142 and the individual volunteers who totalled 2,227. The difficulty with school volunteers was of a different nature. Most of the Task Force school volunteers were studying at Inner London Education Authority schools. In contrast to the school volunteers, most of whom were 14 or 15 years old, the individual volunteers were mainly concentrated in the 21-9 age group. The reason most frequently given by individual volunteers for starting their work with Task Force was their concern for the circumstances of old people. The school volunteers had in general been working for Task Force for a much shorter period than the individual volunteers.

As far as one can tell from the statements of the founding members, Task Force was conceived as a means of providing an extensive service. This is certainly the way in which it has developed. An alternative way of organising volunteers would be to develop an intensive approach which concentrated upon the issue of quality. Although most of the old people accepted by Task Force appear to be amongst the neediest in the population, in terms of social isolation and loneliness, the organisation had no means of identifying the relative levels of need among those it had accepted. The staff would be required to identify as far as possible, in interviews with the old people, the kind of social contact needed and therefore the type of volunteer most likely to succeed in establishing a successful relationship. The staff would differ both in skills and orientation.

This chapter outlines the context of the study and the way the researchers approached the task. It details the kind of constraints within which the statutory services operate and develop; they are one important determinant of the growth of volunteer activity. The mid-1940s witnessed an expansionist phase in British social policy during which there developed a new confidence in the feasibility of meeting social need through statutory social services. The need for voluntary provision, though it did not disappear, may have seemed to many to be reduced as a result of these changes. The very nature of volunteer effort, even when it is channelled through formal organisations, militates against the accumulation of systematic data on the numbers involved, the type of work done and measures of success. Probably somewhere between 4 and 10 per cent of the adult population give their services as volunteers, although only a fraction of this number work in the field of the personal social services.

Isolation can arise in different ways but it tends to take two major forms: the failure, for whatever reason, to establish a durable, accessible and reasonably extensive network of companions; or usually gradual, but sometimes sudden, loss of such a network. Time is an important factor in the equations linking isolation and loneliness. Townsend has shown that loneliness among the widowed tends to decline with the passage of time. Since isolation and loneliness are usually the product of fundamental changes or processes in the life situation of old person, it would be unrealistic to expect social visiting and support to do more than mitigate these problems in any but the most exceptional cases. Provision for old people in need of social visiting and support is largely piecemeal. The local authority provides support in some crises and caring situations, but in others it seems to be uninformed of the needs of old people, or unable to provide the staff to help.

This chapter details the features of the volunteers’ and old people’s social backgrounds or characteristics which might help to explain the outcome of the relationships. The old people were questioned on the frequency and duration of the volunteers’ visits and their estimates were substantially below those of the volunteers. The researchers asked the volunteers a number of questions to evaluate their subjective experiences in their relationships with the old people. An interesting relationship between need and success emerged from the data on the old people. One might reasonably expect young volunteers to find it easier to build up good relations with old people whose needs are not too acute. One of the major issues raised by the use of volunteers in work of the kind described in the study is that of the continuity of visiting. Volunteers are bound to their old people by few obligations other than those created by their own feelings.