Notions of community, professionalism and volunteering in community-centred, public health approaches: a qualitative case study Theodora Machaira A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Teesside University for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) School of Health and Social Care Teesside University Middlesbrough, UK April 2019 i Acknowledgements If someone told me when I finished my undergraduate degree 8 years ago that I would get the chance to do a PhD I never would have believed them. But here I am, submitting my thesis just under 4 years since I started it. There are many people who helped me get here and I would like to acknowledge them. First and foremost, I would like to thank Professor Janet Shucksmith for giving me the opportunity to do a PhD and supporting me throughout. Janet, thank you for helping me get here and supporting me academically and personally. I would not have finished (or started) this PhD if it weren’t for you. I am particularly grateful for the time you devoted in reading and providing feedback on my thesis since you left the university in 2016. I will never forget this and I can only hope that I did you proud. Secondly, I would like to thank Dr Liane Azevedo who kindly agreed to be my Director of Studies following Janet’s departure. Liane, I know it has been a struggle for you and I appreciate all your input and help to get me to submission. Thank you for all the late nights, early mornings and weekends you sacrificed to read this thesis-it means the world to me. I would also like to sincerely thank Professor Raghu Lingam. Raghu, thank you for appointing me to do this PhD and for believing I can do it! More importantly, thank you for sticking with me after your move to Australia, at a time when I really needed it. I am grateful and hope that I did you proud. I owe a huge thanks to Dr Peter van der Graaf for agreeing to be my supervisor halfway through my PhD. I appreciate all the useful comments, your calmness when I panicked, your support when I cried and your encouragement in the past 3 months. I wouldn’t have completed this thesis without your help. ii Thank you to Professor Paul Crawshaw for the comments and encouragement to carry on when I struggled. Massive thank you to Dr Anthony Lloyd who supported me when I lost my Director of Studies, read parts of my thesis and provided me with constructive and useful feedback. Anth, I will forever be grateful! Thank you to Dr Rebekah McNaughton for all the emotional and academic support. Bex, sharing an office with you made me a better researcher and I cannot thank you enough! (Plus I understand a lot more about trees now!) I would also like to thank Dan Jones and Mark Welford who were unfortunate enough to share an office with me. Thanks for listening to my rants, allowing me to distract you to talk about my PhD and generally being there for me. Thank you to my better half Mark for always listening, for allowing me to vent and supporting me, particularly in the last 3 months. Thank you to Becca, my best friend for helping me prepare for my PhD interview, for being my voice of reason when I struggled and for always being there for me. This PhD would have never been possible without the financial support from my commissioners; Stockton Council Public Health. Thank you for allowing me to do this. I would like to thank my participants for providing me with their truths and for allowing me to develop as a researcher and as a person-this PhD would not have happened without you! I can only hope I did justice to the wealth of information with which you provided me. Lastly, I would like to thank my family. Dad, your support allowed me to be who I am and where I am today. Without you I wouldn’t have made it. Mum, it was you who insisted that I iii moved from Greece to England and, although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, I will always owe you for that. Pepi, thank you for being the most supportive and helpful sister in the world, you being at home helped me stick it out in England and I am grateful. Σας αγαπώ απεριόριστα και μου λείπετε κάθε μέρα. iv Abstract Background: Community-centred approaches are increasingly popular in public health practice. The use of volunteers as part of such approaches is common, as it recognises people as assets within communities; assets that can help improve community public health and wellbeing outcomes and aid community development. Case study: Given the widely accepted importance of early years in providing children with the best possible start in life, and in recognition of the need for a shift to bottom-up approaches, a community volunteer programme was designed and implemented in a deprived ward of Stockton-on-Tees in the North East of England. Using this programme as a case study, this PhD thesis aimed to explore what volunteering is and how it works in a community-centred volunteer programme, through examining professionals’, volunteers’ and parents’ accounts. Methods: Qualitative intrinsic case study methodology was used. Rich qualitative data were collected through forty-four interviews, five focus groups, observations and documents. Findings: This study contributes to current understandings around community, professionalism and volunteering within community-centred approaches. A profound lack of a shared understanding of the term ‘community’ amongst different stakeholders was identified. It was also found that volunteering presents development opportunities for disadvantaged community members and particularly asylum seekers. Their strong reciprocal feelings and their willingness to volunteer as well as the plethora of human, social, cultural and political capital they can offer presents opportunities to widen the volunteer workforce. The findings also emphasised the detrimental effect tensions between professionals and volunteers can have on a community-centred approach. Conclusions: This PhD has implications for theory and research. Equally, it has implications for public health practice through the development of a model which can be used as a tool to design community- centred approaches. This model, informed by literature, previous research and the findings from this thesis, can be valuable for commissioners, practitioners, professionals, volunteers and the wider community. v Declaration I declare that this thesis has been composed solely by myself and that it has not been submitted, in whole or in part, in any previous application for a degree. Except where stated otherwise by reference or acknowledgment, the work presented is entirely my own. vi Table of contents Table of contents ...................................................................................................................... vii List of acronyms and abbreviations ......................................................................................... xii List of tables and figures ............................................................................................................ 1 Tables.................................................................................................................................. 1 Figures ................................................................................................................................ 1 1. Chapter One: Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Study background ........................................................................................................ 1 1.2. Volunteering and early intervention ............................................................................ 6 1.3. Researcher background ............................................................................................... 9 1.4. Study approach .......................................................................................................... 11 1.5. Aim and research questions....................................................................................... 13 1.6. Structure of the thesis ................................................................................................ 14 2. Chapter Two: Notions and understandings of volunteering in the literature ................... 16 2.1. Politically contextualising volunteering .................................................................... 16 2.2. Defining volunteering and social capital ................................................................... 20 2.3. Theorising volunteering ............................................................................................ 24 2.3.1. Economical perspectives .................................................................................... 25 2.3.2. Psychological perspectives ................................................................................ 26 2.3.3. Sociological perspectives ................................................................................... 28 2.3.4. Public health perspectives .................................................................................. 32 2.4. Volunteering as a process .......................................................................................... 33 2.5. Criticisms of volunteering ......................................................................................... 34 2.6. Summary ................................................................................................................... 37 3. Chapter Three: Community-centred Approaches in Public Health .................................