An evaluation of the Aged Care Volunteers Visitor’s scheme to improve quality of life and loneliness

Most people will experience loneliness at some point in their lives. Later life can be an especially vulnerable time as people commonly a number of adverse life events that can increase loneliness. For example, common adverse life events include retirement or redundancy, relocation, declining health, life-threatening illness, and/or death of a partner or close friend. In an effort to prevent or improve loneliness, social isolation and quality of life of people in later life, a volunteer visitor scheme has been funded by the Australian government. These services are free and aim to provide friendship and companionship to older people, and help develop social connections. Volunteers visit people and undertake activities such as: sit and chat about current affairs, walk to the local café, read or listen to a book together, enjoy a TV show or participate in a hobby, game or other activity. Further background information on the scheme: https://www.seniorsonline.vic.gov.au/get-involved/community-visitors-scheme https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/community-visitors-scheme-cvs/about-the-community-visitors-scheme This is an interdisciplinary project across the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Medicine. The main evaluation outcomes include quality of life, loneliness, and social isolation. Specific benefits to certain subgroups (e.g. age/gender, multimorbidity, regional location, CALD communities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and LGBTIQ+ communities) are of interest. The PhD project will initially utilise pre-existing data from the evaluation of the aged care volunteer’s visitors’ scheme. Additional data may be collected to evaluate the program to further elucidate the benefits and limitations of the scheme. The preference is for the PhD project to utilise both the qualitative and quantitative data (i.e. mixed methods research). Candidates must possess the desire to undertake data analysis in STATA. A quantitative or qualitative focus could be determined dependent on the candidate’s interests. To be eligible, potential candidates must have at least one first-author publication in an indexed journal (preferably Journal Quartile Ranking of quartile one in Scimago Journal Ranking (SJR) https://www.scimagojr.com/).