The Role of a Palliative Care Social Worker
“What is a palliative care social worker and what do they do?”
It’s a question that gets asked regularly and is one that can elicit a variety of answers depending on the person being asked and the setting in which the role operates.
As an Association we’ve attempted to summarise below what we believe are the core elements of the role and the skills that characterise the people that perform it.
Palliative care social workers are registered social workers that work predominantly or exclusively with people living with terminal illnesses. Social work is core to palliative care.
With the other multi-disciplinary professional team surrounding the person and those important to them, the social worker ensures that services and interventions take account of the whole person as well as their family, whatever that means for them.
The Palliative care social work environment can be diverse and challenging
We are employed differently in each areas; by the NHS, by Adults and Children’s services, by independent hospices, and disease specific charities, and are often funded with money drawn from several different sources often mainly charity donations.
We work with anyone that has a palliative care diagnosis, be that because of cancer, respiratory or heart failure, motor-neurone disease or HIV/AIDS or anything else. We work across boundaries and are often the link between health and social care, for the people that we work with and our professional colleagues.
Palliative care social work is with the whole family, working with adult patients their carers and families and children. Palliative care social worker support children with a life limiting diagnosis working with them and their families with in their own homes hospitals and hospices.
Palliative care social workers can be skilled in therapeutic work, be it systemic family therapy, counselling or cognitive behaviour therapy. We undertake work around helping people to prepare for the end of their lives through advance care planning and psychosocial interventions. We provide bereavement care for people who need more specialist support
Specialist palliative care social workers can offer a wide variety of support to both the person and those that are important to them. This can include sourcing practical help at home, accessing other services, advice around debt or income maintenance, help with housing, advocacy, working with schools or employers, or offering psychosocial support.
We work with groups as well as individuals
We have a keen interest in working alongside people with lived experience and including others in how we shape our services and practice for the future.The overarching theme of this kind of work is to continue to see whole people living within whole families rather than as an individual with a set of specific problems to solve.
We seek to understand the connections of life and support people as they come to terms with what is happening to them or someone close to them, and support them to continue to live as they choose for as long as they can. The combination of skills offered by specialist palliative care social workers makes a unique contribution to the psychological and social aspects of the multi-disciplinary professional team.