Is Your Hospice Volunteer Work Exploitative or Symbiotic?

I am all for death workers gaining hands-on experience through hospice volunteering. In fact, it’s the first piece of advice I give anyone being called into death work and curious about where to start. But at what point does our community service become exploitation?

There are MANY wonderful hospices that support their local death midwives and death doulas. And there are also MANY that benefit from our education and experience without reciprocity. I think it’s important to talk about what a symbiotic relationship between a hospice and it’s volunteer death workers can look like.

If you donate your time to your local hospice, do you feel valued as a death worker? Is your education and experience acknowledged? Are you encouraged to offer some services as a community service but require compensation for others? Are you given opportunities to be compensated for your knowledge and experience in your education offerings? Is your service marketed to the larger community as a valued support to the hospice system? Is your voice as part of the care team heard? Does your hospice amplify your voice into the death care space? Does your hospice value you as an asset or treat you as a competitor?