Kontakt 2010, 12(4):425-434 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2010.056

Analysis of need for volunteers in health and social spheresHealth and Social Sciences

Barbora Vernerová, Alena Sitárová

Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích, Zdravotně sociální fakulta, katedra supervize a odborné praxe

In our republic, volunteer activities are currently being less used compared to the situation in abroad. Volunteers are usually included into different activities of organizations acting in many fields of public life (ecology, health and social spheres, culture, sport and education, etc.). Of course, the volunteers are most frequently involved in activities in the health and social spheres.
In the theoretical part, the article presented here deals with general problems of volunteer activities and their use in the field of health and social services. In a further part, it is focused on a description of the research itself and its results. The target of the work was mapping the contemporary condition of using volunteer activities and the measure of the need for volunteers active in social and health services. The qualitative research in these spheres was implemented in the city and surroundings of Teplice, the main research method being inquiring. The data accumulation itself was performed over 2009-2010.
The research results suggest that a large proportion of respondents work with volunteers or are interested in their cooperation. However, numbers of volunteers and frequency of mutual cooperation are prevalently insufficient for particular institutions. The most frequently used volunteer activities were also mapped. The cooperation with volunteers is most appreciated by respondents in terms of the possibility of individual work of a volunteer with his/her clients. In spite of the fact that there is a volunteer centre Ústí nad Labem in the vicinity of the city, institutions in Teplice suffer from a lack of information about possibilities of cooperation. The data obtained indicated that active attitude of institutions to searching for volunteers or attempts aimed at larger promotion of volunteer activities could be helpful in their development.

Keywords: volunteer activities; volunteer; health and social spheres

Received: August 4, 2010; Accepted: November 26, 2010; Published: December 22, 2010  Show citation