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the end of 1969, the Ayes ittee published its report onthe tarY Worker in the Social Services. '01:1°.°th, a committee of inquiry under .sena,'rrnanship of Dennistoun Stevenson Led nte its findings on the role of g u oPmti s in the environment. The Ayes ,Ittiori was commissioned by the g tlal Council of Social Services and 11115rjr:Ni:tiorital Institute for Social Work The Stevenson committee was " °V Peter Walker as part of the tifl of a brief for the Stockholm `ence on the Human Environment. 6,ao 4leh 110 two groups focused on erent, asPects of the role of volunteers e IP 04 v°Raitary organisations, there is (1 bP1overlap between the human inetrhs they discussed for the reports to tel:restingly comparable. It is imme Ilea" apparent that Stevenson and his t,h1 re g4,es have produced a very much As rauioal document. 4nlernber of the Ayes Committee I • knechessarily reluctant to criticise its vr.,11,t I do not think either that a this sort should be regarded as
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rismword on a subject or that those ns IR • e 13-for its production should have late r themselves as bound never to 0e from its conclusions. orCajor error is revealed early in the t.„we had agreed to restrict our thii" to those volunteers who work tdrithe framework of some sort of tsa,." The problem of drawing a ti,„"et was quite simply one of Ops• The friendly neighbour who • 'n to check on the health of an old fi the car owner who responds to a tr:appeal to provide transport for an :or the handicapped, the couple 'pi,alt occasionally at a children's home e'Y for half an afternoon — all of °131d properly be called voluntary d's though the thought might well kill ed• In concentrating on the 'onalised volunteer, we paid great to the need for careful selection, .,1,41.1gh training and proper support on the f ere was even approving mention of 0114kilar2i.et that some volunteers — the 4tVile8 who work in the probation are an example — received an La accreditation. Voluntary workers ve gone through all this are in a l'her'i3e mini-professionals. eWere good reasons for such a 01 interpretation of the limits within Jrit volunteers should function. Social tiis Was only just building a precarious iatif,as a11 profession, its united no I arat: Was t yet established, its Ll organisational structure was ' Proposal. The expertise of the Worker is even now difficult to and, irritatingly for any profesasio, Lb, e inspired amateur can just "allY pull off a matchless piece of work, To have proposed any role for volunteers other than that exercised strictly under the control of paid full-time workers would have been to alienate our audience completely and could indeed have set back social work's progress towards a definable expertise. We played safe. As little as a year or two after the event, one can see how dated a set of attitudes our report embodies. The progress within the social services made by community work as a technique has given the professionals new courage and new skill in mobilising community resources alongside their own. Volunteers are no longer seen as merely extra hands to carry• out the less exciting jobs delegated to them, but are taking their place as partners in a shared enterprise. Hospitals are realising that they need their voluntary workers not only to help on understaffed wards but also to represent the wider healthier community beyond the institution's gates. Social services departments are coming to recognise that volunteers may be useful not just for pushing the wheelchairs of the disabled, but, perhaps disabled themselves, for putting across a handicapped point of view on the provision of services. The Stevenson Committee pursues the issue to its conclusion and urges full recognition of the fact that voluntary bodies are moving away from a purely service function to take on the less passive role of pressure groups and critics. Government funds, it argues, should be made available for such activities which are, it claims in a fine phrase, a prerequisite of a participating community. Such calls flow well from the report of a working party, but they do not easily persuade the politicians, civil servants and local authority officials who would have to withstand the onslaught of such publicly funded attacks. The Skeffington Committee, it will be recalled, recommended Mr Walker's predecessor to encourage the employment of community relations officers who would help underprivileged groups to articulate their opposition to official planning, but that suggestion has been politely pigeon-holed. Has the movement toward participation, in all forms of enterprise, made sufficient headway for the Stevenson Report to be heeded now?
When the Ayes Committee held its first meeting, the chairman, one-time chief welfare officer at the Ministry of Health and a formidable lady by any standard, introduced me to the other members as the representative of youth "; it felt like a heavy responsibility but it also put me firmly in my place. The Stevenson Committee by contrast boasts in its report that its average age was under thirty. More than merely age separates Ayes and Stevenson, more too than merely the couple of years between publication dates. Ayes represents a safe social worker's view of the late 'sixties when professionals were just about confident enough to allow selected volunteers a carefully controlled role. Stevenson embodies the progressive planner's new look at the mid-'seventies when the community refuses to acknowledge that decisions are so important that they must be left to the professionals.
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