From volunteer work to informal care by stealth: a ‘new voluntarism’ in social democratic health and welfare services for older adults

Abstract

In the context of current and expected demographic changes, the issues of which services the welfare state should offer and, ultimately, the very function of the welfare state are currently debated in Norway. The political discourse on health and care services for older adults has morphed into an accepted reality in which the system must be altered, prompting policy makers and stakeholders to find new and novel solutions to problems associated with population ageing. In this paper, we discuss one such proposed solution: the transformation of health and care services for the older adult population through the increased involvement of volunteers. We ask how volunteer efforts are articulated and delineated through official accounts and discuss the implications of such an articulation and delineation. We seek answers to these questions through a critical discourse analysis of recent governmental white papers. We investigate, in other words, volunteer efforts as a political instrument. We argue that the official representation of how efforts in health and care services should be re-aligned take the form of a distinct discourse of ‘voluntarism’. Within this ‘voluntarism’, volunteer efforts have been altered from a third sector comprising charity and non-profit organisations that contribute within or as a supplement to the largely public-run welfare system to a limitless and extensive concept that is blurring the boundaries to informal care.