Volunteers find satisfaction in helping

From counseling traumatized firefighters to training parents, psychologists find creative ways to volunteer their time and expertise.

By Scott Sleek
Monitor staff

Los Angeles psychologist Joanne Jubelier, PhD, quit her job at a community mental health center 14 years ago, upset over the fact that the facility had eliminated its sliding fee scale. She set up a private practice, but also wanted to continue helping people who couldn?t afford private services. So she began volunteering at a local primary-care clinic for low-income families, where her duties included work on a triage team that provided health care to homeless people. And by last year, she was volunteering 40 hours a month as a project director at the clinic, setting up specialized programs for the facility?s client population.

'I wasn?t recruited to do this type of work,' she says. 'I did some shopping around to find the right place for me to give back to the community. That?s what I?ve been doing ever since.'

Jubelier is among many psychologists and other mental health professionals who have found more satisfaction in their lives through volunteer work, finding a number of creative ways to give their time and expertise, from providing psychological services in Third World countries to counseling stressed-out cops. They?re finding fulfillment through providing:

? Interventions for public safety personnel.

Although many police departments in larger cities have psychologists on staff, there are still communities that can?t afford that luxury, notes John Linton, PhD, of the West Virginia University School of Medicine. And many tiny communities have only volunteer safety personnel?local residents who are on call to respond to fires or other emergencies, he adds. That offers psychologists an opportunity, he says, to conduct stress-management workshops for emergency and safety personnel, or to conduct stress debriefings for those personnel. Psychologists can also help set up and train teams of mental health professionals and emergency service workers who serve as peer counselors. For example, a police officer can be trained to conduct debriefings for colleagues who have been involved in a traumatic incident, such as shooting a perpetrator in self-defense or responding to a gruesome traffic fatality. Such a program can help prevent small communities from having emergency service workers who are psychologically impaired because of trauma or stress, Linton says. The technique is especially effective given that emergency responders may trust a peer?someone who has experienced what they?re going through?more than a mental health professional, Linton writes in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice (Vol. 26, No. 6, p. 566?573).

? Mediation in custody disputes. Child Find of America, Inc., a national nonprofit charity that helps locate missing children and resolve incidents of parental abduction or custody violations, relies on the volunteer services of psychologists who are skilled at mediation, says Donna Linder, the group?s executive director. The group keeps a list of experts who can provide free mediation services to parents who call for help?including those who have hidden their child from the other parent and are looking for a way out of the situation.

Child Find also provides the mediation to parents who are contemplating taking their child away from a spouse in violation of court orders, and also to parents whose court-ordered visitation is being denied or who are trying to locate a child abducted by the other parent.

For more information about becoming a mediator under Child Find, contact the organization at P.O. Box 277, New Paltz, NY, 12561-0277, (914) 255-1848, fax: (914) 255-5706, web site: www.childrencharities.org/childfind.html

? Parental education programs. Many communities are in vital need of child-development education programs for parents. In her volunteer work at the Venice Family Clinic, Jubelier helped adapt an existing consultation service for parents of young children into the Warm Line program?a pilot project that provides parenting help to low-income clients. Bilingual staff members at the clinic are trained to become child development counselors. They provide information to clients about early childhood development and effective parenting. 'It?s a program that?s existed for 23 years,' she says. 'There are modules on sleep disruption, temper tantrums, toilet training and many other subjects. But they all were based on the needs of a middle-class population. So we took the program and revised the modules to have more application not only to a poverty population, but to a population that speaks another language.'

For more information about the program, contact Jubelier at Warm Line Program, Venice Family Clinic, 604 Rose Ave., Venice, CA 90291, (310) 476-1379, fax: (310) 472-9945.

? Leading community dialogue. Psychologists can facilitate 'town-hall' meetings, helping local leaders and residents discuss pressing community issues and work toward solutions, says Anne Anderson, national coordinator for the Washington, D.C., based Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR). For example, Steven Fabick, EdD, a Birmingham, Mich., practitioner and member of PsySR?s Michigan chapter, last January moderated a community dialogue about affirmative action?a controversial issue in the Detroit area. About 70 people attended the event. Fabick and other members of Michigan?s PsySR chapter also have developed a program called 'Us & Them: The Challenge of Diversity,' a workshop designed to help schools and professional and community groups resolve conflicts between men and women, racial and ethnic populations and other groups. Psychologists can obtain a manual from PsySR to learn how to lead such workshops.

For more information on community volunteer work, contact PsySR at 2607 Connecticut Ave., Washington, DC 20008, (202) 745-7084, fax: (202) 745-0051, web site: www.rmc.edu/psysr

? Consumer research, consultation. Psychologists who teach consumer psychology in universities can provide free help to nonprofit organizations and charitable groups by assigning their classes to conduct market research or develop marketing plans designed to improve fund raising, says Lynn Kahle, PhD, a professor at the University of Oregon and past president of APA?s Div. 23 (Consumer).

Consumer psychologists can also provide pro bono help to organizations producing public service announcements, Kahle says. They can use empirical knowledge to help those groups design the most effective and well-targeted advertising messages on such subjects as AIDS prevention, gun safety and racial tolerance.

? Services to labor unions. Practitioners can contact local labor unions and offer to provide pro bono services to members. For example, practitioners can help laborers who are suffering the hardships of a lengthy strike, note psychologists Michael Sullivan, PhD, of APA?s Practice Directorate, and his colleagues in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice (Vol. 28, No. 5, p. 413?418). In Michigan, the Michigan Psychological Association arranged to have members volunteer to provide clinical services to newspaper workers involved in the protracted and bitter strike against the Detroit newspapers.

? Disaster response. Perhaps the most widely publicized arena for psychologists to provide pro bono services has been through the Disaster Response Network (DRN) coordinated by APA?s Practice Directorate. Through the DRN, more than 1,500 psychologists volunteer to provide crisis counseling to victims of natural or manmade disasters, such as floods or bombings. The DRN works in cooperation with the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other emergency response teams. For more information, contact APA's Practice Directorate at the APA address, (202) 336-5898.