Characteristics of volunteers and families in a neonatal home visitation project: the Kempe Community Caring Program

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this paper is to review literature related to home visitation support for new families using volunteer visitors and to describe characteristics of volunteers of the Kempe Community Caring Program, a home visitor support program for first time parents. Suggestions for effectively utilizing volunteers in family support programs are made.

METHOD

Program data was collected and reviewed on 592 volunteer home visitors and the 1,144 families they served. Several evaluations and assessments were performed in order to attempt to measure the success of the intervention. Motivation for volunteering, longevity with program, and the extent of sociodemographic match between visitor and client were reviewed and discussed.

RESULTS

Information on matched volunteer-client pairs was limited; however, speculations were made that neither motivation to participate nor sociodemographic match were critical factors in determining success of the intervention. Duration of volunteer participation was influenced by marital status, but not by age. Married volunteers stayed with the program significantly longer than unmarried volunteers. Low risk families demonstrated slightly improved confidence in parental function after receiving home visitation by a volunteer.

CONCLUSION

This program suggests that new mothers may benefit from receiving the services of a volunteer home visitor; specifically, their confidence as parents and ability to establish positive relationships show slight improvement. Likewise, volunteers and families felt satisfied with the supportive relationships generated. In addition, a volunteer profile emerged which may be beneficial to similar programs' recruiting efforts.

Volunteer services for vulnerable families and at-risk elderly

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the volunteer with vulnerable populations, specifically, new parents and their infants and at-risk elderly. As demand for volunteer services increases due to budgetary and personnel reductions, a better understanding of volunteers as service providers is imperative.

METHOD

A review of the literature related to volunteers who work with these two populations was conducted. Volunteer characteristics, roles, needs of populations served, recruitment, and training issues were addressed, specifically as they relate to the two populations.

RESULTS

Studies indicate that the socio-demographic range of volunteers is wide, as are the motivations for volunteering. Similarities between the needs of new families and the elderly exist, and volunteers for both populations often provide supportive and pragmatic services. Volunteers for both populations are further challenged to maintain a client-focused intervention, a task which may be more difficult in the home. Training of volunteers was found to be both client and volunteer driven, with the needs of the population being served and the role of the volunteer within a specific service domain of prime importance.

CONCLUSION

Similarities between infant and elder populations exist, as do volunteer interventions with these populations. A theoretical framework for defining motivation, designing need-based training, and addressing the role of volunteers is discussed. The use of volunteers as compassionate and cost-effective service providers for populations across the lifespan not only provides an increase in the number of skilled workers involved with these vulnerable populations, but also allows professional staff to expand the care which they are able to provide.

Management of a mandibular high-flow vascular malformation

A case of a high-flow mandibular vascular malformation successfully treated with combined selective embolization, resection, and reconstruction is reported.

Facial patterning and infant emotional expression: happiness, surprise, and fear

Although recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that emotional expressions can be judged reliably from actor-posed facial displays, there exists little evidence that facial expressions in lifelike settings are similar to actor-posed displays, are reliable across situations designed to elicit the same emotion, or provide sufficient information to mediate consistent emotion judgments by raters. The present study therefore investigated these issues as they related to the emotions of happiness, surprise, and fear. 27 infants between 10 and 12 months of age (when emotion masking is not likely to confound results) were tested in 2 situations designed to elicit hapiness (peek-a-boo game and a collapsing toy), 2 to elicit surprise (a toy-switch and a vanishing-object task), and 2 to elicit fear (the visual cliff and the approach of a stranger. Dependent variables included changes in 28 facial response components taken from previous work using actor poses, as well as judgments of the presence of 6 discrete emotions. In addition, instrumental behaviors were used to verify with other than facial expression responses whether the predicted emotion was elicited. In contrast to previous conclusions on the subject, we found that judges were able to make all facial expression judgments reliably, even in the absence of contextual information. Support was also obtained for at least some degree of specificity of facial component response patterns, especially for happiness and surprise. Emotion judgments by raters were found to be a function of the presence of discrete facial components predicted to be linked to those emotions. Finally, almost all situations elicited blends, rather than discrete emotions.