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For the sake of their health: older service users' requirements for social care to facilitate access to social networks following hospital discharge
- Authors:
- McLEOD Eileen, et al
- Journal article citation:
- British Journal of Social Work, 38(1), January 2008, pp.73-90.
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Facilitating older service users’ requirements for access to or re-engagement in social networks following hospital discharge is recognized in social care analysis and policy as critically important. This is because of the associated benefits for restoring physical health and psychological well-being. However, it tends to be a neglected dimension of current social care/intermediate care. This paper draws on a qualitative study of voluntary sector hospital aftercare social rehabilitation projects in five UK localities, which focused on addressing this issue. Through examining older service users’ feedback and experience, the study confirms the health benefits of social care facilitating access to social networks at this crucial juncture. By providing sensitive interpersonal interaction, advocacy and ‘educational’ assistance, social care workers supported older service users’ re-engagement in a variety of networks. These included friendship, recreational and family groups, health care treatment programmes and locality based contacts and organizations. As a result, material, interpersonal and health care resources were accessed, which contributed to restoring and sustaining physical health and psychological well-being. The process of such social care also emerged as critical. This included ensuring that objectives reflected service users’ priorities; integrating ‘low-level’ home care; offering befriending; and challenging the pre-set time frame of intermediate care.
Social work in accident and emergency departments: a better deal for older patients' health?
- Authors:
- McLEOD Eileen, BYWATERS Paul, COOKE Matthew
- Journal article citation:
- British Journal of Social Work, 33(6), September 2003, pp.787-802.
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Well-established internationally, the current development of social work in UK accident and emergency (A&E) departments is part of a conjoint health/social care policy drive to divert older people from 'unnecessary' admission to acute hospital care on social grounds. However, from older service users' standpoint, the prime criterion for assessing A&E social work is not its powers of diversion, but its contribution to optimum health and social care. This account indicates that A&E based social work can provide important benefits, including help with negotiating the A&E environment and readier access to social services. Nevertheless, continuing professional-service user power imbalances, together with shortages in health and social care services, undermine its positive contribution both within A&E and following discharge. Notably, under-resourced community based health and social care can lead to services implemented through A&E, swiftly unravelling. This has serious consequences for older service users facing interlinked health and social problems, and may be implicated in re-attendance at A&E.