Allowances are made for vacations and sickness. Time will be spent building trusting relationships with residents and staff and becoming familiar with non-communicative residents. After an initial period of developing relationships, the volunteer ombudsman may take on the roles of problem solver and advocate. The ombudsman will also make attending the Residents Council meetings a priority. Ombudsman Program staff and the volunteers have frequent phone contact, and staff makes site visits with volunteers individually.
Volunteers provide peer support at the in-service meetings.
These include a total of over 10,000 beds.