Volunteer Services

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Volunteer Positions

TRANSPORTATION: Volunteer drivers who commit to half-day duty shifts transport clients to medical appointments, office visits, errand destinations and the like.

HOME-DELIVERED MEALS: As many as ten clients daily may receive a meal at home delivered by a volunteer. Area restaurants or individuals donate meals.  This program is restricted to clients who are very ill, unable to prepare food, and have no caregiver to do so for them.

HOUSECLEANING AND MAINTENANCE: Volunteers help clients with light housekeeping and chores when clients cannot complete the tasks themselves.  This includes transporting and installing home furnishings and appliances that are donated to AIDS Help from time to time for use in our housing program.

SHOPPING: Volunteers help clients with shopping by accompanying them to stores or by doing the shopping themselves and delivering the purchases (food, medications, household goods, etc.) to clients' homes.

MOVING ASSISTANCE: Volunteers assist clients in moving to new homes.

BUDDY COMPANIONSHIP: This companion service, usually provided one on one, are people that are matched to a client's specific needs either in person or by phone. These volunteers offer emotional support, friendship, practical assistance and compassionate care throughout the changes in a client's life and health circumstances.

LEGAL SERVICES: Office or at-home assistance to clients in terms of legal power of attorney, living will, disposition of remains, notary services, landlord-tenant disputes, and other legal matters.

PET CARE: Volunteers feed and care for clients' pets when clients are hospitalized or otherwise unable to tend to pets.

EVERY PENNY COUNTS: Every Penny Counts is a 365 day a year fundraiser that benefits AHI.  Penny Jars have been placed in strategic locations all over the island, and volunteers retrieve and deliver collected money to AIDS Help.

OFFICE WORK: Volunteers assist staff daily at the office.  These tasks may include working reception, filing, typing, etc.

SPECIAL EVENTS: AIDS Help, Inc. does a number of fundraisers and special events throughout the course of the year.  Volunteers may be needed to set up and tear down, handle payments, meet and greet, etc.

VOLUNTEER CODE OF ETHICS POLICY

We are very pleased that you are considering to become a volunteer at AIDS Help. In order to protect you, our clients, and our agency, we have developed this policy.

Providing services to people with HIV illness is a sensitive endeavor calling for meticulous care in protecting privacy, preserving confidentiality, respecting appropriate relationships between provider and client, and complying with laws, standards, and regulations bearing on AIDS related care and treatment.

Volunteers must agree, by signing a copy of this policy, to abide by the following standards that comprise AIDS Help’s Code of Ethics governing interaction of volunteers with clients.

Volunteers shall:

1. Respect the confidentiality of all records, materials, and communications regarding clients.
2. Treat clients in an objective, non-possessive and professional manner, and respect their rights and views.
3. Not discriminate among clients on the basis of race, sex, creed, age, sexual orientation or any other individual characteristics unrelated to services being provided.
4. Recognize when it is in a client’s and/or the agency’s best interest for the volunteer to release the client to another volunteer to handle a given situation or provide services to the client.
5. Assist and interact with clients in non-enabling, empowering ways that encourage clients to help themselves, and avoid conduct that could be detrimental to, or exploitative of a client.
6. Provide the highest possible quality of service and care.
7. Conduct themselves appropriately in personal interactions with clients so as to pose no risk to personal or organizational reputation, and so as to protect volunteers and AIDS Help from possible liability or litigation.
8. Refrain from engaging with a client in sexual intimacies or other behavior that could reasonably be interpreted as conveying sexual or romantic interest.
9. Refrain from entering a landlord-tenant relationship or a business relationship with a client with whom a volunteer is working as an AIDS Help volunteer.
10. Refrain from accepting from clients any goods, services, or gifts that could create inherent potential for conflicts, exploitation and distortion of the relationship.
11. Refrain from sexual harassment of a client, which is defined as including, but not necessarily limited to, sexual advances, verbal or physical conduct of a sexual or sexually suggestive nature, presentations of a sexual nature (e.g. display of signs, posters, illustrations, and the like, or of recorded material), requests for sexual favors, and any comportment that reasonably might be interpreted as having sexual connotations.

CONFIDENTIALITY OF CLIENT INFORMATION

The purpose of this Memorandum of Understanding is to emphasize that all information held in health records is confidential with access governed by state and federal laws.

Information that is confidential includes a client’s name, address, medical, social, and financial data, and services received.

In addition, the fact that someone has had an HIV test is confidential, whether the result of the test is positive or negative. Data collection by interview, observation, or review, of documents should be conducted in a setting that protects the client’s identity from unauthorized individuals. Client information should not be discussed outside the agency, except in the performance of referrals to other agencies for client care.

Section 384.29, Florida Statutes, addresses the need for special discretion in the handling of sexually transmissible disease information. Sexually transmissible diseases, by their nature, involve sensitive issues of privacy and all programs designed to deal with these diseases should afford privacy and confidentiality to the client.

Section 381.609, Florida Statutes, deals with confidentiality of HIV test results. There are penalties for violating this statute. These penalties range from disciplinary action by the agency to a criminal misdemeanor.

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