Features of the Social Behaviour of Volunteers working with Disabled Children

Introduction. Volunteering and voluntaryism are important resources for ensuring the development of Russia, its social and other types of security. It must be a field of socially, psychologically, morally, etc. safe assistance. This requires the principles and standards of volunteer work, their selection and training, research and a differentiated approach: different situations and types of volunteering require an extended and in-depth understanding of the specifics of a volunteer’s activity, whether he has certain qualities, patterns of behavior and communication, values and etc. The objective of the research is to study the peculiarities of social behavior of volunteers working with disabled children. Materials and Methods. Methodology and methodic toolkit includes the scientific studies devoted to volunteering as a social phenomenon and summarizing the researches on social behavior in general, describing the specifics of working with disabled children. The study employed the following methods: the authors’ questionnaire “Volunteers’ Social Behaviour”; Personal Value Orientation (B. Bass Orientation Inventory); V. V. Boyko Communication Attitude Diagnostics; S. K. Nartova-Bochaver “Sovereignty of Psychological Space”; O. F. Potemkina Diagnostics of Social Psychological Attitudes of a Person in Motivation and Needs’ sphere. The study involved 40 volunteers of different sex, age and occupations, who participated in the work of Kaluga Charity Fund “Volunteers — to Children”. Results and Discussion. “Career” volunteers possess various peculiarities of social behavior distinguishing them from occasional volunteers, intensified task orientation and latent aggressiveness. The researchers revealed a range of important points which indicate personal and social maturity of many volunteers and negative influence of poor and destructive individual experience of volunteers, especially occasional ones. Abundant and positive experience in relations helps both occasional and other volunteers to be successful and also not to be afflicted by the negative states of the people under their care and not to use it otherwise than it provided by the values and purposes of the helping situation. Negative moments of volunteering are relatively rare in the context of both studies devoted to spiritual and moral aspects of helping relations and comprehension of their socio-cultural and individually-psychological aspects. Conclusions. Volunteers working with disabled children possess such features of social behavior distinguishing them from occasional volunteers as task orientation and latent aggressiveness, which proves the authors’ hypothesis. It is occasional volunteers’ individual experience that not infrequently hinders their efficiency.