Do they give of time and effort to help others, to fulfill someone else’s need, or perhaps their own?To make a difference? To pay a debt? To feel a connection?
There are as many volunteers’ stories as there are volunteers. But they are all a part of one bigger story – the story of what, collectively, volunteers can do.
Ask Darlene Kingwell, the regional co-ordinator of volunteer and spiritual services for Prairie North Health Region.
“Volunteers are there to support in the same way the staff is supporting better health, better care, better value and better teams.”
This evening, Tuesday, April 1, there will be a gathering of 300 or more volunteers at the Knights of Columbus Hall in North Battleford where health region management and civic leaders will pay tribute to the volunteers of Prairie North. It’s a thank you for all their many stories.
The provincial government’s strategic priorities of “Better Health, Better Care, Better Value and Better Teams” may be the current mantra of the direction of health care in Saskatchewan, but health care volunteers have been working that agenda long before it became an official direction.
“Volunteers are here to enhance the services provided in health care,” says Kingwell. “That means anything from long-term care to acute care or primary health. Volunteers are there to enhance by providing that connection with the community.”
There have always been volunteers, and over the last three decades or so that important human resource has become formalized and is now a distinct entity within Prairie North Health Region. The beginnings date back to when there was no region, when health districts were still the administrative bodies of health care.
Kingwell would be the first to say this story is not about her, but a look back at her career does put things into perspective.
Twenty-six years ago today, April 1, Kingwell became the first co-ordinator of volunteer services for the home care program in the Battlefords. Meals on Wheels was a few years old at the time, and until that point had been “on the side of the desk of somebody who did scheduling.”
After her time there, and after a year working at Saskatchewan Hospital, she began co-ordinating volunteers for the then health district. When the Prairie North Health Region was created, the larger area came under her watch as well.
“How fortunate for me to have such a career in volunteer management,” says Kingwell.
At one time it was a matter of writing your name on a recipe card in a box and pitching in, but things have become more formalized and, indeed, the field of volunteer management has become a recognized profession. Kingwell is certified with the Canadian Administrators of Volunteer Resources.
But for all its administrative advances, volunteer management is still about the people who volunteer.
Kingwell and the present co-ordinator of volunteer services with the home care program, Denise Schmidt, share an obvious pride in what volunteers bring to health care in the region. Despite knowing the ins and outs of volunteer resources, theirs is almost a sense of wonder at what, individually and collectively, their volunteers do.
To view the full article, please visit The Battlefords News-Optimist.
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