Who manages volunteers in health and community service organisations in Victoria?
Volunteering is an increasingly important phenomenon within human services. The contraction of government funding for human service organisations and the devolving of social responsibility by the state, under conservative state and Federal governments is under pinned in part by the assumption that the unpaid/voluntary sector will pick up the role of service provision and fill the gaps created by funding and resource shortfalls. While volunteers contribute many hours of unpaid labour, this is often not systematically recorded as part of the organisational output, or reflected by a sufficient level of infra structure support. As a consequence, Managers of volunteer programs, who are often highly skilled, qualified and experienced, find themselves marginalised in their organisations. This mirrors a sector that ambivalently relies on volunteer effort to enable the provision of services, yet recognises the potential for exploitation and erosion of conditions that increased volunteer activit
