Teen volunteer program wins clients’ hearts
Teen volunteer program wins clients’ hearts
And teen garners national honors, too
The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast in Largo, FL, has always used teen-age volunteers, but there was no formal program to recruit and find special jobs for them.
"We had always had a lot of young people," says Mary Labyak, MSW, president and chief executive officer of the hospice, which sees 1,250 patients a day in the St. Petersburg-area on Florida’s western coastline.
"At Christmastime, we always did caroling at many patients’ homes, and everybody brings their families," Labyak says. "We’d notice how much patients enjoyed having children come in."
Then, in 1994, the hospice applied for and received an intergenerational grant through the Juvenile Welfare Board in Pinellas County, FL.
The grant’s focus was to bridge the generational gap by giving young people a chance to know older people. This is especially important in Florida where many children don’t see their grandparents on a regular basis, and many retirees live far away from their grandchildren, says Sandra Mahood, BA, intergenerational volunteer program specialist.
The program has worked quite well. The first grant of $25,000 paid for training students to work in a hospice home to provide support and companionship to residents. The next year, the program was expanded to include nursing home patients. Now, the students visit patients’ homes.
More than 350 high school students have trained to become hospice volunteers, and the teenagers have won national awards and received praise from clients and their families. For example, the Hospice Teen Council at Palm Harbor (FL) University High School, which has about 80 teen hospice volunteers, was selected in October 1998 to receive a President’s Service Award that is co-sponsored by Washington, DC-based Points of Light Foundation and the Corporation for National Service.
Also, 18-year-old volunteer Brenda Corace was the national teen-age recipient of the Volunteers Are the Foundation of Hospice Award, sponsored by the National Hospice Foundation in Washington, DC, which was awarded in Dallas in November 1998. Corace is president of the Hos-pice Teen Volunteer Organization at Palm Harbor University High School.
The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast’s intergenerational program easily could be duplicated by other hospices that are willing to devote some resources for the project. Here are Mahood’s and Labyak’s tips for getting started:
• Recruit dedicated teens.
The students should be at least high school, at least freshmen and between the ages of 14 and 18.
The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast focuses its recruitment efforts at several area high schools with magnet programs. Magnet schools often attract an area’s most talented and brightest students.
"Those magnet programs require 300 hours of service in the community," Mahood says. Plus, many of those students are interested in pursuing careers in medicine, so hospice work is a natural draw for them.
Besides Palm Harbor University High School, the hospice has worked with Boca Ciega (FL) High School, like Palm Harbor, has a medical magnet program.
The intergenerational volunteer program, however, is open to other area high school students, and volunteers have come from about every private and public high school in Pinellas County, Mahood adds.
Labyak says she was pleasantly surprised at how polite and mature the students have been. "It’s been a wonderful program; it has grown far beyond any expectations I’ve had."
However, after a couple of years of recruiting high school students, it became clear to hospice officials that the hospice marketing materials needed to be made more appealing to youths. The hospice obtained more grant money to start an intergenerational marketing project.
"Rather than have our marketing department do some new marketing material, we wanted to involve young people," Mahood says. "We wanted to see how they would like to reach out to other young people to tell them about hospice."
Several senior adult volunteers met with the teens, and together they created a campaign called Hospice Teen Volunteers. The students designed a campaign logo of "HTV" that resembles the popular Music Television Video (MTV) logo.
The students worked with a graphic artist to design a brochure, and made an HTV video. Teens wrote the video script and scheduled people to appear on camera.
Teens were also trained to be speakers, and formed a Teen Speakers Bureau. Now, they speak to community youth groups.
"It creates an awareness of hospice, and it challenges kids to get involved in their commu nity," Mahood says. "We’ve had a tremendous response from this campaign, and recruited 75 students since the implementation of the marketing grant."
• Provide meaningful training and work.
Students attend 24 hours of hospice training over an eight-week period. They go through the same application and screening process as adult volunteers. They must fulfill the following requirements:
1. Provide four references;
2. Take a tuberculosis test;
3. Complete all training requirements;
4. Accept a placement in an approved teen volunteer program. (See box, left, for complete list of programs in which teens participate.)
One advantage to having many students attending area magnet schools is that the hospice trainers can go to the schools and offer after-school training, Mahood says.
Students also may enroll in Saturday classes, or attend ongoing training classes at different sites throughout the county.
• Support their skills, ideas, contribution.
As the project evolved, the teens began to take on more and newer roles as volunteers. They even have applied for and received a grant from an agency that funds projects that are designed and implemented by youths. "They do their own budget and present the idea to a panel of judges," Mahood explains.
The teens, including Corace, received about $650 to start the hospice’s "Life, Camera, Action!" video program. Students visit hospice patients at the patients’ request, bringing a video camera, tripod, and tape. Then, the students videotape the patients, giving them a chance to review their life memories or to say farewell to loved ones, Mahood says. (See story on videotape program.)
The intergenerational program has taught the students about life and death, as well as helped hospice patients and families.
"The wisdom of these young people is phenomenal; the outcome is, we’ll raise the next generation of adults who find these topics less taboo and less difficult to talk about," Labyak says.
"When they’re 50, 70, or 90 years old, they’ll see death much more differently than all of us, and maybe they’ll embrace the gift of their lives," she adds.
Corace recalls how her first hospice project was to be a mentor to a 12-year-old boy who had a life-threatening disease and was waiting for a transplant. She and another teen volunteer befriended him, taking him fishing, to movies, and breakfast. They also helped him with homework.
"He was down in the dumps and was having peer pressure at school. His mother wanted us to be positive role models for him," Corace recalls.
The boy eventually moved, and the students never saw him again, Corace adds. "Before he moved, he told us he wanted to know if there was a hospice where he was moving so he could volunteer and help people like we did."
Here’s how teens help
Teen volunteers for The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast in Largo, FL, assist in the following programs:
• Nursing home volunteers
• Hospice house
• Home team volunteers
• Teen mentors for children’s program
• "Life, Camera, Action!" video project
• Computer support
• Clerical support
• Research assistance
• Collating and mailing assistance
• Reception
• Gift-wrap volunteers
• Trees of Love volunteers
• Golf and tennis tournament volunteers
• Fashion show volunteers
• Regatta volunteers
• Thrift shop sales assistance
• Thrift shop window display
• Thrift shop donation drives
• Hospice teen council
• Hospice teen speaker’s bureau
• Intergenerational advisory committee
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