Providing Quality Through Volunteers. On the importance of coordination in ensuring the quality of care provided by volunteers in a professional care organization.

Abstract

This thesis focuses on how professional care organizations might coordinate their volunteers in such a way that quality of care is ensured. Through participant observation and interviews in an organization in which high quality care is given by a team that is largely dependent on volunteers, the study provides one example of how the coordination of volunteers in a professional care organization can effectively result in quality of care being ensured. In light of the transformation of the Dutch welfare state into a participation society, the study shows that an increasing reliance on volunteers in the provision of care and quality of care remaining up to par can go hand in hand, but that this requires a coordination process that takes time, money and a lot of motivation.