After you sign up for a service, you will receive an email giving you all the information about the request. Two days before the date of the service, you will receive a second confirmation email.
The night before the service, you should call the member to remind them about the service, unless the detailed instructions explicitly ask you not to.
While driving in a car or performing another service, you will often talk to the member and learn about them. Please respect the privacy of our members.
Normally, there is no reason to call the office after completing a service. However, if there is something that the office should know about how the service went or about the member that subsequent volunteers should know, please call the office.
If you believe that a member may have gone beyond the point where we can safely serve them, please call the office. We have a Services Assessment Committee that will assess the situation, coordinate with professionals from Elder Services and the Councils on Aging, and make a recommendation going forward. You are our eyes and ears on the ground, and we will take your observations seriously.
Many of our members receive services from other agencies. The membership agreement that our members sign when joining gives us permission to talk to agencies such as Elder Services or the town Councils on Aging. We will work with those agencies to ensure that services are in place to help our members stay in their home.
On rare occasions, a member behaves in an inappropriate manner, either by being rude or offensive, or by asking for excessive numbers of unplanned stops. We want to know when this occurs. We do not want our volunteers to have bad experiences. We have a team that will speak with the member if warranted. The few times there have been problems in the past, the member was unaware of being offensive and was apologetic. We explain to the member that a reasonable number of additional stops are fine, provided they are part of the original request so that a volunteer with adequate time and the inclination to make all the stops is providing the service.