Social Work Practice And End Of Life Care

This book draws together the learning of a wide range of social workers and other professionals engaged in end of life care who recognise that dying is essentially a social experience and want to tailor a personal, professional and societal response accordingly. Through a systemic lens, the book explores the nature and experience of living and dying in the UK today, then considers ways in which social workers and others may want to work with people who are affected by a diagnosis of a life-threatening condition. The contributors offer rich and contemporary perspectives on death, dying and loss, reflective of their different approaches and interests. The insights of the book are timely, given the growing levels and changing nature of needs for people who are coming to the end of their life in the UK and beyond, and the related requirements for compassionate, personalised and holistic care within the increasingly professionalised arena of health and social care. This book will be of interest to social work practitioners, students, and others committed to psychosocial support of people who are dying or bereaved, and who want to consider how to provide this support most effectively. Professionals who are interested in working alongside social workers to deliver high quality end of life care will also find this publication useful. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Work Practice.

The first text to explore the history, characteristics, and challenges of hospice social work, this volume weaves leading research into an underlying framework for practice and care. A longtime practitioner, Dona J. Reese describes the hospice social work role in assessment and intervention with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and the community, while honestly confronting the personal and professional difficulties of such life-changing work. She introduces a well-tested model of psychosocial and spiritual variables that predict hospice client outcomes, and she advances a social work assessment tool to document their occurrence. Operating at the center of national leaders' coordinated efforts to develop and advance professional organizations and guidelines for end-of-life care, Reese reaches out with support and practice information, helping social workers understand their significance in treating the whole person, contributing to the cultural competence of hospice settings, and claiming a definitive place within the hospice team.

The Oxford Textbook of Palliative Social Work is a comprehensive, evidence-informed text that addresses the needs of professionals who provide interdisciplinary, culturally sensitive, biopsychosocial-spiritual care for patients and families living with life-threatening illness. Social workers from diverse settings will benefit from its international scope and wealth of patient and family narratives. Unique to this scholarly text is its emphasis on the collaborative nature inherent in palliative care. This definitive resource is edited by two leading palliative social work pioneers who bring together an array of international authors who provide clinicians, researchers, policy-makers, and academics with a broad range of content to enrich the guidelines recommended by the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care.

Accessible and instructive, Palliative Care guides and inspires health social workers to integrate palliative care principles into their current clinical practice. Through the lenses of environmental theory and intersectionality, rich case narratives and diverse practice settings highlightopportunities for social workers to enhance their work, thereby advancing whole-person care in the face of serious illness. The volume also models engagement, assessment, and intervention through key palliative care skills and language. Chapters include questions to concretize ideas and demonstratereal-world application, while case narratives cover a range of settings, diagnoses, and populations. This book is a useful tool for any social worker working with individuals and families navigating complex health care systems.

This unique book provides a rare look at social work and palliative care from the perspective of service users. Drawing on new original research, the authors examine service users' experiences, tracking their journeys through it, exploring the care they receive and the effects of culture and difference through their first hand comments and ideas.

Practitioners who work with clients at the end of their lives face difficult decisions concerning the client's self-determination, the kind of death he or she will have, and the prolongation of life. They must also remain sensitive to the beliefs and needs of family members and the legal, ethical, and spiritual ramifications of the client's death. Featuring twenty-three decision cases based on interviews with professional social workers, this unique volume allows students to wrestle with the often incomplete and conflicting information, ethical issues, and time constraints of actual cases. Instead of offering easy solutions, this book provides detailed accounts that provoke stimulating debates among students, enabling them to confront their own responses, beliefs, and uncertainties to hone their critical thinking and decision making skills for professional practice. *Please note: Teaching Notes for this volume will be available from Electronic Hallway in Spring 2010. To access the Teaching Notes, you must first become a member of the Electronic Hallway. The main Electronic Hallway web page is at https://hallway.org/index.php. To join, click Become a Hallway Member in the Get Involved category or point your browser directly to https://hallway.org/involved/join.php and provide the required information. After your instructor status has been confirmed, you will receive an e-mail granting access to the Electronic Hallway. Once logged on to Electronic Hallway as a member, click Case Search in the Cases and Resources category on themain web page. Enter "death, dying, bereavement" (without the quotation marks) in the search box, select "all of the words" in the drop down menu, and click Submit. The search process will generate a list of Teaching Notes for cases from Dying, Death, and Bereavement in Social Work Practice: Decision Cases for Advanced Practice.

After graduating, students in social work are faced with the daunting and stressful decision of choosing their specialty from the many that are available to them. JessicaRosenberg has designed this guidebook to make this process easier, providing students with real world and practical information about what it is really like to work as a social worker. Each chapter covers a different practice setting, such as child welfare, gerontology, and addictions, and follows the same format. The Field Overview and Forecast describes the social worker’s role, scope of services, and emerging issues and employment trends. The Critical Issues section consists of an interview with an established professional in his or her chosen field, offering a look into their personal journeys as they progressed through their careers. A vignette written by a practitioner in their area of specialty makes-up the First Person Narrative, providing the reader with a look at the joys and challenges of working in that particular field. Each chapter then concludes with helpful resources to learn more, such as books and websites, as well as information about specialty credentials and educational programs and centres. Those entering the social work field will find this an indispensible guide as they select their specialty and begin their career.

In our society's aggressive pursuit of cures for cancer, we have neglected symptom control and comfort care. Less than one percent of the National Cancer Institute's budget is spent on any aspect of palliative care research or education, despite the half million people who die of cancer each year and the larger number living with cancer and its symptoms. Improving Palliative Care for Cancer examines the barriersâ€"scientific, policy, and socialâ€"that keep those in need from getting good palliative care. It goes on to recommend public- and private-sector actions that would lead to the development of more effective palliative interventions; better information about currently used interventions; and greater knowledge about, and access to, palliative care for all those with cancer who would benefit from it.