‘We need to work together with staff in new ways’
Charley MacMartin, Hospice Volunteer Services manager at Home Health & Hospice, has leveraged volunteerism in entirely new ways. Now, on-call volunteers can accept weekend calls when regular staff aren’t on to help support families when they need it, even deliver supplies to a home-care nurse when no one else can. Charley recalls one volunteer who added a simple note for a family they were delivering such supplies to. “Thinking of you” is all it said, but it meant a lot to them.
“We thought, ‘what can we do that would fall into the category of respite and companionship?’,” he says. “In the past, the volunteer’s role was pretty clear. But now we need to work together with staff in new ways and with a lot more collaboration to help manage staffing challenges.”