About the Aged Care Volunteer Visitors Scheme (ACVVS)

What the scheme is

This scheme supports volunteer visits to provide friendship and companionship to older people. 

Visits are available to anyone who: 

• receives government-subsidised residential aged care or Support at Home package, including care recipients approved or on the National Priority System for residential or Support at Home
• is socially isolated. 

We work with around 130 community organisations to recruit and support volunteer visitors to visit socially isolated and vulnerable older Australians.

The scheme has been running for over 30 years. It was previously known as the Community Visitors Scheme (CVS).

Why it is important

Some older people can feel alone for various reasons. This includes: 

• feeling isolated from their culture and heritage
• little contact with friends or relatives
• mobility issues that prevent them from taking part in social or leisure activities
• being different in some way. 

Regular visits from volunteer visitors can help to improve quality of life and help older people feel less isolated.

Goals

Volunteer visiting is a free service that aims to: 

• provide friendship and companionship to older people
• help develop social connections. 

It focuses on the needs of older people from particular diverse, cultural and complex vulnerability backgrounds who may be at greater risk of social isolation. These include people who are:

• from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities
• veterans (note: Veterans Home Care (VHC) or Community Nursing (CN) recipients must also receive Commonwealth funded Support at Home package)
• from culturally, ethnically and linguistically diverse backgrounds
• financially or socially disadvantaged
• experiencing homelessness or at risk of experiencing homelessness
• parents and children separated by forced adoption or removal
• adult survivors of institutional child sexual abuse
• care-leavers, including Forgotten Australians and former child migrants planed in out of home care
• lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans/transgender, intersex, or other sexual orientations, or are gender diverse or bodily diverse
• living with a disability or mental ill-health
• neurodivergent
• deaf, deafblind, vision impaired hard of hearing
• living in rural, remote, or very remote areas.

How it works

We fund community organisations to: 

• recruit, train and support volunteer visitors
• conduct police checks for volunteer visitors
• match volunteer visitors to older people receiving aged care
• support the relationships that form between the volunteer visitors and the people they visit. 

Volunteers visit at least 20 times per year. They can be: 

• one-on-one or group visits to residential aged care homes
• one-on-one visits to people receiving Support at Home.

Older people can refer themselves. The scheme also accepts referrals from: 

• aged care service providers
• family members
• friends
• health professionals.

Learn more about how to become a volunteer visitor. 

Request a volunteer visitor (for yourself or someone else, with their consent).

Who we work with

Network members represent each state and territory. Their role is to:

• support community organisations to deliver the scheme
• coordinate volunteer visitors and services in each state and territory
• help communication between community organisations and us. 

We manage and organise regular reviews of the scheme.

Community organisations we work with

Community organisations are funded through grant rounds to provide services.

Evaluation and review

We appointed Monash University to evaluate the ACVVS from 2023–2026.

The evaluation will test the:

• effectiveness of the social support intervention in improving quality of life for participants (recipients and volunteer visitors) through reduction of social isolation and loneliness
• effectiveness of the social support intervention for diverse, complex vulnerability and cultural groups including funding models and delivery pathways
• cost effectiveness of the intervention’s impact on health, mental health and aged care service usage for care recipients
• extent to which the scheme has achieved its intended program outcomes.