In this reflective commentary, I will use the Gibbs (1988) Reflective cycle to reflect upon my experience of volunteering at the Dementia Hwb. The Dementia Hwb is a Dementia Friendly Swansea initiative, which provides a signposting service and advice to carers and members of the public who are affected by dementia or are worried about their memory. Members of various health organisations volunteer on different days throughout the week, but the main Dementia Hwb volunteers’ roles are to listen to the concerns of those who visit the Dementia Hwb and to have a friendly chat. The Dementia Hwb is a great place for someone like me to volunteer as I am quite shy, and it is a quiet and gentle placement that helped me to ease into the helping role. Given that it is a signposting service, there are many leaflets to give information about different types of dementia, social groups, support for those with dementia and support for carers.
I enjoyed networking and meeting the other volunteers as they are all from similar backgrounds in either health or psychology, and this helped me to think about my future career ambitions. Networking is one of the ways I can further my success in my chosen career (Jiang, 2023). I also enjoyed getting to talk with visitors and the regulars as I found this is where I was able to practice my active listening skills. There were times when I felt helpless as there were often issues being raised by visitors that I thought were unfair and I wanted to help, but the issues were out of my control. For example, one visitor who was 80 and disabled was being evicted from their flat because the Council had permission to knock down the building to build new student accommodation, this made me feel angry, but I could not do anything to help but listen to them. The more people I spoke to, the more I was able to learn from our conversations and this helped me to develop emotional resilience (Grant & Kinman, 2014)
Over the time that I volunteered at the Dementia Hwb, I think I practiced my listening skills well and developed my knowledge after hearing and learning how other volunteers responded to certain queries about social groups, benefits, worries about memory etc. Something I found challenging was having to deal with visitors who would misuse the service. Some people would come in because they were lonely and just wanted to chat and I would have to leave them alone while attending a visitor who had concerns about dementia. I also struggled with self-disclosure, as I would bring up my experience of dementia with visitors in an attempt to empathise with them, but this could have come across like I was not focused on helping the visitor with their concerns but rather my own. Midwinter and Dickson (2015) state that when clients maximise self-disclosure, it is important for the counsellor to use it sparingly. Teamwork was another skill that I used while at the Dementia Hwb as all the volunteers depend on each other and help one another if there is a question that we do not know how to answer. Teamwork is important not only for the wellbeing of the volunteers, but is also important to ensure visitors are content with the advice that we give them (Ogbonnaya et al., 2018)
By the end of my placement, I found myself being an example for new volunteers that had joined as they were listening to how I was replying to visitors’ questions, which is how I know I was demonstrating good helping skills. I was able to maintain ethical boundaries by adhering to the BACP (2018) code of ethics, especially when I had concerns from a confused elderly gentleman believed someone had leaked his personal information and I was able to reassure him that our conversations were confidential. Organisation is another important skill that I was able to develop by keeping track of my online training and keeping records of what I learned at placement, keeping track of visitor concerns in the Dementia Hwb logbook, and by organising the leaflets that were on display and making sure they were fully stocked. Organisational skills require taking care of the most important tasks while achieving one’s targets, (Bennett, 2002). I developed good customer service skills because I was able to actively listen to visitor concerns (Min et al., 2021). I know that I developed good active listening skills because I was able to practice SOLER skills (Egan, 2013), i.e., sitting squarely, open posture, leaning in, appropriate eye contact and relaxing my body. When using these skills, this also helped me to demonstrate increased congruence, empathy, and nonjudgement for those I was in conversation with, which Rogers (1957) believes is necessary and sufficient for the therapeutic relationship.
In conclusion, I have learned how teamwork and organisation can ensure that I am providing the best customer service. I have also learned that sometimes the best thing that I can do to help people is to simply listen and not judge them. I have identified that I need to work on my emotional resilience, I know that more experience will help with this but at the meantime I will ask my module lead for any advice concerning this. I was surprised to learn how much dementia can affect the family and carers and the feelings of loneliness and hopelessness that can be felt.
	Moving forward, I plan to research how to empathetically approach people who misuse the service, as well as continuing to develop my own emotional resilience while discussing difficult topics, so that I do not let it affect me after I have left my placement. I also need to work on how to appropriately use self-disclosure when listening to the concerns of others so that others feel that I am being empathetic.