Introduction

Volunteering is far from new, but over the past decade and a half, it has moved from the ‘shadows into the policy spotlight’ (Kendall, 2010, p 1). The weight of expectation about the contribution that volunteering, of all kinds, can make to the wellbeing of individuals and communities has never been greater (Rochester et al, 2010). The involvement of governments in volunteering has expanded since the mid-1990s, as we noted in Chapter One. Under the coalition government, in the UK, this seems set to continue, with the flagship Big Society agenda intended to encourage more volunteering and local action, to empower communities and to encourage social enterprises to deliver welfare services tailored to individual needs at low cost. Volunteering is multifaceted and by no means is all volunteering concerned with caring for others, as the refreshing reassessment by Rochester et al (2010) reminds us. Most care is unpaid and usually performed in domestic settings, but increasingly also through VCSOs, where it may be paid, unpaid or a hybrid of both (Daly, 2002). Care has become more fragmented between different institutional settings (public, private, voluntary and household) since Showstack Sassoon (1996, p 185) wrote so evocatively of the ‘patched together needs, resources and institutions’ that enabled the economy to function. The decline of the state as a direct provider of welfare services is associated with the rise of social enterprise and the push for the VCS to become more enterprising (Amin, 2005; Bull, 2008). That is why volunteering, care and enterprise are at the heart of this book.