The Marie Curie Helper Service provides volunteers to meet the emotional support needs of terminally ill people and their carers. The service aims to enable carers to cope better, reduce social isolation, and support people to live well through the terminal phase of their illness. An evaluation found the key benefits were an outlet for thoughts and feelings, companionship, a sense of independence, respite for carers, and practical support. However, the evaluation noted that routinely measuring the impact of the service is challenging but important to understand how client well-being changes over time and what difference the intervention makes compared to no support.

1. THE MARIE CURIE HELPER SERVICE
MEASURING THE IMPACT OF VOLUNTEERING
Ruth Bravery, Director of Community Involvement
20 March 2014

2. WHAT IS THE MARIE CURIE
HELPER SERVICE?
Service Aims:
• Meet the emotional support
needs of terminally ill people, and
those of their carers
• Enable carers to cope better and
continue in caring role
• Reduce social isolation
• Support people to live well
through the terminal phase of
their illness
“I felt guilty at first, admitting I couldn’t cope.
But the nurse convinced me, she said if I
was depressed I wouldn’t be as much help to
my husband as if I allowed myself a break.”
Carer, Nottingham
Service structure
One service manager per locality
• 60 trained volunteers
• Up to 100 clients
• 1 service administrator
Service areas:
• Active in 5 areas
• In development in 3 areas
• Rolling out to 3 further areas in
2014/15
2
Volunteer-delivered service, supporting people with any terminal
illness or those caring for them.

3. BENEFITS OF THE MARIE CURIE
HELPER SERVICE
• Respite support for carers
• Accompanied visits to:
– The shops
– Visit spouse in hospice
– Hospital and GP appointments
– Receive welfare benefits advice
• Companionship
• Information giving
3
She’s actually taken me shopping once and she took me to
hospital and it’s lovely because I feel independent. You know, you
just feel like you’re going with a pal.
Terminally ill person, Nottingham
I don’t like the prospect of having suddenly to come to
terms with the fact that I may be dying and to have
somebody intelligent and sympathetic to chat about these
things is a great help.
Terminally ill person, Somerset

4. EVALUATION 4
Ipsos MORI Qualitative Evaluation of the Helper service, April 2012
Designed to support the wider internal evaluation of the service
Explored:
• The service aims
• Benefits and factors for success
• Understanding and expectations for the service
• Service delivery
• Challenges facing the service
• The future development of the service
Depth interviews and focus groups with service users, volunteers,
referrers and Marie Curie staff

5. EVALUATION FINDINGS 5
Ipsos MORI Qualitative Evaluation of the Helper service, April
2012
• Primary aim as ‘emotional support’
• Key benefits:
- Outlet for thoughts and feelings
- Someone different to talk to
- Companionship
- Sense of independence
- Respite for carer
- Practical support
- Signposting to other services
• Overall ‘positive effect on emotional wellbeing’, making life ‘a little bit
easier’
• Evaluation also explored reasons for success, assessed service
delivery, identified challenges and areas for development, and made
recommendations.

6. BUT HOW DO WE ROUTINELY
MEASURE OR MONITOR IMPACT?
6
Let’s take client well-being as an example…
• Qualitative interviews are not practical on an on-going basis
• For quantitative measures, we need to decide:
• Which measure to use (standardised vs bespoke)
• How often to measure it (to understand change over time)
• What success looks like (what might have happened otherwise)
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
Before 6 weeks 12 weeks
Well-beingscore
Intervention
general population

7. CECILIA AND HANNAH 7
East London Helper service
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVV57Xy6whM&

8. THANK YOU
FOR YOUR TIME