Social Work Practice And End Of Life Care

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.

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.

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.

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.

Spirituality and Hospice Social Work helps practitioners understand various forms of spiritual assessment for use with their clients. The book teaches practitioners to recognize a client's spiritual needs and resources, as well as signs of spiritual suffering.

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.

This text provides graduate students going into the social work field with real world and practical information about what it is really like to work as a social worker. Each chapter presents a true picture of what to expect as a front-line social worker in the given practice setting.

This new text illuminates the essential information about health and social work critical to understanding today’s complex health care systems and policies. Chapters highlight current practice, policy, and research in different settings and with special populations. Readers learn how to advocate for the individuals, families, and communities they serve to help improve health and well-being for all. All those interested in micro, mezzo, and macro practices in a healthcare setting will appreciate this rich resource. Highlights include: Each chapter speaks to the interconnections between practice, policy, and research and how they are integrated to inform social work and health. Unique chapters dedicated to special populations such as children and families, older adults, immigrants, persons with HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ individuals, veterans, and people with disabilities provide a deeper understanding of the health care issues specific to these groups. Thorough coverage of the role of social workers in a variety of settings such as substance abuse, correctional systems, public health, and integrated behavioral health care. An in-depth discussion of the values and ethical issues in a health care environment. An intersectionality lens used throughout promotes a greater understanding of a client’s multiple status of race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, education level, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identification. Detailed case examples developed by professionals in the field in Parts II and III accompanied by discussion questions further enhance an understanding of the issues. Highlights how social workers advocate for social justice to promote good health and well-being for all. On-line instructor's resources including Power Points, how chapter content is tied to the 2015 CSWE Educational Policy Accreditation Standards (EPAS), answers to discussion questions, including approaches that instructors can use with cases and research, as well as a sample syllabus with suggested options for instructors to modify for different courses. Intended as a core text for MSW and advanced BSW courses on health and social work, social work practice in health care, health and wellness, or integrative behavioral health taught in social work, public health, or gerontology programs, this book is also of value in social work practice courses that focus on health care and special populations. Social workers practicing in the health care field will also appreciate this book.

The first resource on end-of-life care for healthcare practitioners who work with the terminally ill and their families, Living with Dying begins with the narratives of five healthcare professionals, who, when faced with overwhelming personal losses altered their clinical practices and philosophies. The book provides ways to ensure a respectful death for individuals, families, groups, and communities and is organized around theoretical issues in loss, grief, and bereavement and around clinical practice with individuals, families, and groups. Living with Dying addresses practice with people who have specific illnesses such as AIDS, bone marrow disease, and cancer and pays special attention to patients who have been stigmatized by culture, ability, sexual orientation, age, race, or homelessness. The book includes content on trauma and developmental issues for children, adults, and the aging who are dying, and it addresses legal, ethical, spiritual, cultural, and social class issues as core factors in the assessment of and work with the dying. It explores interdisciplinary teamwork, supervision, and the organizational and financing contexts in which dying occurs. Current research in end-of-life care, ways to provide leadership in the field, and a call for compassion, insight, and respect for the dying makes this an indispensable resource for social workers, healthcare educators, administrators, consultants, advocates, and practitioners who work with the dying and their families.

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.