Support Networks In A Caring Community

The historic Binnenhof, seat of the Dutch government in The Hague, provided the setting (January 1985) for a conference in which participants from eleven countries met to consider the theme: Support networks in a caring community: research and policy, fact and fiction. At the outset, conference leadership - provided by Professors J.M.L. Jonker (The Netherlands) and R.A.B. Leaper (United Kingdom) urged the conferees not to allow their enthusiasm for informal support networks to combine with the pervasive awareness of the failures of welfare states into a simplistic stance of advocacy, with a consequent appeal to politicians to direct state funds accordingly. Legitimate criticisms of the responses of welfare states to the needs of citizens were to be seen as the context for discussion, not the substance of conference deliberations. More specifically, if it is now apparent to many people that governmental assistance of individuals with social needs can lead to an undesirable dependency on the part of increasingly passive citizens, that awareness does not lend logical support to an ideological position that governmental expenditures are pern~c~ous per se - to be replaced as rapidly as possible by a return to reliance on self, family, friends and associations that are developed voluntarily and financed by those who are sufficiently interested.

The main aim of this practical Handbookis to strengthen counselling and communication skills of skilled attendants (SAs) and other health providers, helping them to effectively discuss with women, families and communities the key issues surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, postnatal and post-abortion care. Counselling for Maternal and Newborn Health Careis divided into three main sections. Part 1 is an introduction which describes the aims and objectives and the general layout of the Handbook. Part 2 describes the counselling process and outlines the six key steps to effective counselling. It explores the counselling context and factors that influence this context including the socio-economic, gender, and cultural environment. A series of guiding principles is introduced and specific counselling skills are outlined. Part 3 focuses on different maternal and newborn health topics, including general care in the home during pregnancy; birth and emergency planning; danger signs in pregnancy; post-abortion care; support during labor; postnatal care of the mother and newborn; family planning counselling; breastfeeding; women with HIV/AIDS; death and bereavement; women and violence; linking with the community. Each Session contains specific aims and objectives, clearly outlining the skills that will be developed and corresponding learning outcomes. Practical activities have been designed to encourage reflection, provoke discussions, build skills and ensure the local relevance of information. There is a review at the end of each session to ensure the SAs have understood the key points before they progress to subsequent sessions.

Care for the elderly, disabled and mentally-ill within and by the community forms a vital part of current social policy. Martin Bulmer argues that this policy is inadequately thought out and rests on a series of poorly founded sociological assumptions. As a result there is a vacuum at the heart of government’s social care policy which is likely to lead to ineffective or deteriorating provision for those in need. This book, first published in 1987, will be essential reading for all those concerned with the organization and delivery of social care, whether as students, practitioners or teachers. It will be particularly useful for courses dealing with social policy, the personal social services and the social context of social work.

This edited collection focuses on the relationship between social care, communities and citizenship. While there is extensive research within each of these fields, until now there is a dearth of dialogue between them: this book provides a link in a way that is relevant to both policy and practice.

This publication is a collection of papers (some including tables and charts) presented by their authors at the 1989 Symposium on Social Supports. Some of the major issues addressed in the publication are: effects of AIDS on social-service workloads, impacts on women's health of having to work outside the home and care for a family, effects of family support upon seniors' usage of services from agencies and firms, ethnic differences in caring for the elderly, and various kinds of help given by the elderly to their familes and to voluntary agencies. Also included are commentaries on the studies by senior professionals in fields of social service. The book contains a total of 15 papers that present research findings or review the state of knowledge in a given field of research.

Compassionate communities are communities that provide assistance for those in need of end of life care, separate from any official heath service provision that may already be available within the community. This idea was developed in 2005 in Allan Kellehear’s seminal volume- Compassionate Cities: Public Health and End of Life Care. In the ensuing ten years the theoretical aspects of the idea have been continually explored, primarily rehearsing academic concerns rather than practical ones. Compassionate Communities: Case Studies from Britain and Europe provides the first major volume describing and examining compassionate community experiments in end of life care from a highly practical perspective. Focusing on community development initiatives and practice challenges, the book offers practitioners and policy makers from the health and social care sectors practical discussions on the strengths and limitations of such initiatives. Furthermore, not limited to providing practice choices the book also offers an important and timely impetus for other practitioners and policy makers to begin thinking about developing their own possible compassionate communities. An essential read for academic, practitioner, and policy audiences in the fields of public health, community development, health social sciences, aged care, bereavement care, and hospice & palliative care, Compassionate Communities is one of only a handful of available books on end of life care that takes a strong health promotion and community development approach.