Volunteer Experience in Mental Health Care CVS Group Reflection

This report details a volunteer's experience within a General Adult Mental Health Care Community Visitors Scheme (CVS) group, a subordinate section of the organization of UnitingCare Ballarat. The report discusses the aims of the group, which include enhancing the quality of life for socially or culturally isolated residents by diminishing feelings of loneliness, isolation, depression, and anxiety. It also elaborates on the processes of the group, the stages of volunteer involvement (recruitment, training, continuous visiting, and termination), and the roles played by the volunteer, including building rapport with visitors, providing mental support, and sharing ideas with aged care providers and the coordinator. The report also addresses conflicts encountered, such as anxiety, uncertainty in service creation, and the emotional impact of visitor deaths, and how these were mediated through coordinator support and firm manuals. This reflection links practical experiences to theoretical frameworks relevant to Social Work practice. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments to support students.

Running head: MY EXPERIENCE AS A VOLUNTEER IN GENERAL ADULT MENTAL
HEALTH CARE1
My Experience as a Volunteer in General Adult Mental Health Care
Institution’s Name:
Student’s Name:

MY EXPERIENCE AS A VOLUNTEER IN GENERAL ADULT MENTAL HEALTH CARE
2
My experience as a volunteer in General Adult Mental Health Care
Most of us have in all probability resulted and also have been in small groups in which
there wasn’t any deep connection in between group members for mostly long time. Therefore it
should approach as no bombshell that among the largest challenges facing small groups is
actually facilitating the process of formation of an genuine community. However, with higher
emphasis on provision of collaboration and most active opportunities for learning in institutions
such as administration and institution of higher education, have drawn more attention behind
benefits achieved by using small group experiences. Small groups, enhances comprehensive
learning and also full engagement of members (Palmer, 2007.)
Psychological illness is prevalent in Australia, and it has considerable blow at the individual, and
social levels. Research from the 2007 National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, that was
carried out by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), shows that one out of five people who
are aged 16 upto 85 years experiences common form of psychological illness
The group members also get a real life experience that is critically a benefit that
improves their communication, skills in team work and also gain leadership skills. The
exploration of my experience that I gained after participating as a member of General Adult
Mental Health Care group has been elaborated in this assessment. General Adult Mental Health
Care group is used with different connotation to signify social welfare that is focused on
residents.

MY EXPERIENCE AS A VOLUNTEER IN GENERAL ADULT MENTAL HEALTH CARE
3
Aims of the group
General Adult Mental Health Care Group is basically a group that supports other groups
socially. The GAHC group was initially started in the year 1989-1996 and was readily available
to the Government of Australia. It is under the Department of Health, 2018(National Mental
Health Policy) in the Australian Government. The group builds a more viable and sustainable
sector that is community managed across Australia. It is a non-profit making institution
(Mastanaiah, 2014.)
Its aims are:
i. To ensure that there is expansive recovery options in and within the community.
ii. Increase the range of options that are available in enabling that people’s social life is
stabilized.
iii. It also aims at influencing the government’s commitment in decision making and also
social inclusion matters.
iv. Enhancing the social life of Australian people in either socially or culturally cut off
residents.
v. Increase more understanding of the value of social life of the citizens and also ensuring
equitable concern in the planning services.
vi. Improving the capacity of the community visiting service group.
vii. Promoting and strengthening of the capacity associated with the community health
sector across Australia
viii. Sharing of the knowledge and the resources in an efficient and effective manner to avoid
isolation of Australian residents.

MY EXPERIENCE AS A VOLUNTEER IN GENERAL ADULT MENTAL HEALTH CARE
4
ix. Driving creativeness and promotion of new programs that are based on social and
cultural inclusion.
Processes of the group engaged in achieving its aims.
The General Adult Mental Health Care consisted of the few volunteers and a coordinator.
The coordinator recruits the volunteers in which the volunteers have to be trained, assessed by
relevant officers, go through police check and also taken through orientation. More attention has
been granted towards developing the potential cultural and social welfare of the community
(Timofte, 2017.)
In order to achieve the above objectives or aims, General Adult Mental Health Care, matches the
volunteers with one or two Australian Citizens in one of the aged care facility. The citizen comes
from different backgrounds based on culture. However, these volunteers are required to carry out
visiting services not less than once per fortnight (Zorotovic, 2011.)
The Coordinator basically carries out the review of the volunteers programs twice annually as a
way of seeking feedback from the Records of Visits.
Stages of the group
In first stages of the group, the volunteers were recruited, evaluated and trained each at a time.
Thereafter, each volunteer is given a consecutive recipient in which the volunteer is required to
give visiting services to the recipients. However, the volunteer has to remain intimate and
provide feedback especially to the coordinator (Neelakantan, 2012.)

MY EXPERIENCE AS A VOLUNTEER IN GENERAL ADULT MENTAL HEALTH CARE
5
In the second stage, also known as continuing visiting stage coordinator gets feedback directly
from the visitors in the activities of the group such information session. In such meetings, we
have group cohesion resulting and increase in some feelings. However, there are some few
conflicts in the meetings and also evolution of the culture as members interact with the
recipients, coordinator and also other members. The volunteers are actually motivated by the
coordinator to remain so focused such that they can overcome any challenges they might come
across. In this stage, the coordinator also finds it necessary to develop variations and also
separate forms of support that maybe directly service user led for example peer support
volunteers. I encountered many problems in my volunteer work but due to help of the
coordinator, I was able to solve the problems. I also improved my key skills of communication
and also my performance increased, therefore, this encounter led to development of my
experience.
In the final or third stage of General Adult Mental Health Care group is mainly concerned with
improvement, enlargement and continous performance of the group. This is also a very critical
stage where volunteers gets terminated for instance because of misconduct or by visitors will to
exit the scheme. The exit interview of volunteers is carried out by the managing director or the
coordinator and such records are keep for review or future reference. Since the group has
matured in this stage, and the group has adapted Bruce Tuck man’s model phase which are
necessary and inevitable as the help the group togrow, tackling problems, facing the challenges
and coming up with the solutions.
Roles that I played while the group was performing

MY EXPERIENCE AS A VOLUNTEER IN GENERAL ADULT MENTAL HEALTH CARE
6
In order for the community visiting scheme group to achieve its aims and goals, there
must be key performances that facilitate or act as the driving force for achieving the objectives.
The group therefore had assigned everyone the roles to perform.
i. The coordinator leads the group
ii. I built rapport and mentally supported the other visitors.
iii. I had to act uberima fides as I perform my assigned work.
iv. Freshmen had to get information from the experienced ones.
v. We shared ideas with the aged care providers, volunteers and also with our coordinator.
Conflicts and their mediation in the group
For my experience in working and development in General Adult Mental Health Care, I
came across few conflicts of which they occurred rarely. They were,
i. Anxiety and uncertainty in creation of new services.
ii. Determination of the best appropriate method of initiating new developments
iii. Recipient’s severe negative emotions infected me.
iv. Death of the visitor who I used to visit regularly actually was very painful.
In case of any challenge, the coordinator was more than willing to help. He therefore had to
maintain morale (Collins-Sussman, 2002.)
The coordinated supported us with our experience and manuals of the firm. However,
time is needed for a progress from the instigation level of a change towards the phase of
consolidation. In general at the early stage engaged with volunteers’ service, basically transforms

MY EXPERIENCE AS A VOLUNTEER IN GENERAL ADULT MENTAL HEALTH CARE
7
a charismatic member hence small group champions major proposals, and also recruit
coordinator. In East of European countries, for instance, the medical director in the psychiatric
care holds a veto for change.

MY EXPERIENCE AS A VOLUNTEER IN GENERAL ADULT MENTAL HEALTH CARE
8
REFERENCES.
Neelakantan, P., Rao, C. V. S., & Indramohan, J. (2012). Bacteriology of deep carious lesions
underneath amalgam restorations with different pulp-capping materials-an in vivo
analysis. Journal of Applied Oral Science, 20(2), 139-145.
Collins-Sussman, B. (2002). The subversion project: buiding a better CVS. Linux
Journal, 2002(94), 3.
Zorotovic, M., Schreiber, M. R., & Gänsicke, B. T. (2011). Post common envelope binaries from
SDSS-XI. The white dwarf mass distributions of CVs and pre-CVs. Astronomy &
Astrophysics, 536, A42.
Zorotovic, M., Schreiber, M. R., & Gänsicke, B. T. (2011). Post common envelope binaries from
SDSS-XI. The white dwarf mass distributions of CVs and pre-CVs. Astronomy &
Astrophysics, 536, A42.
Timofte, R., Agustsson, E., Van Gool, L., Yang, M. H., Zhang, L., Lim, B., ... & Wang, X.
(2017, July). Ntire 2017 challenge on single image super-resolution: Methods and results.
In Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW), 2017 IEEE Conference
on (pp. 1110-1121). IEEE.
Mastanaiah, P., Reddy, G. M., Prasad, K. S., & Murthy, C. V. S. (2014). An investigation on
microstructures and mechanical properties of explosive cladded C103 niobium alloy over C263
nimonic alloy. Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 214(11), 2316-2324.

MY EXPERIENCE AS A VOLUNTEER IN GENERAL ADULT MENTAL HEALTH CARE
9
Palmer, K. (2007). An Rx for women. CVS Caremark aims to be a one-stop shop for stressed
customers. US news & world report, 143(17), 51.
Wiveliscombe, S., SAVAGE, M. P., CVS, K. K. E., de Garis Deldaf, P. P., SLIM, S. K., Grogan,
S., ... & Cousin, J. The Economic Contribution of the Voluntary Sector in the South West
Region.