Search results for ‘Subject term:"palliative care"’ Sort:
Results 1 - 2 of 2
Decriminalising an expected death in the home: a social work response
- Author:
- HUGHES Margaret E.
- Journal article citation:
- British Journal of Social Work, 43(2), 2013, pp.282-297.
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
An issue yet to be examined in the social work research literature concerns an expected death at home and the experiences of informal carers being subjected to a police investigation following a request for help. While research in this area is scant, sufficient mention of unnecessary police involvement is made in the palliative care literature to show that incidents like these have occurred throughout Australia, America, Canada and the UK. This article examines the Australian context, analysing the practice of reporting deaths to the police in instances where a doctor is not immediately available to attend the home to certify the death of a person diagnosed with a terminal condition. Personal accounts from three research participants derived from a subset of data analysed for a larger qualitative study are used as empirical evidence to illuminate the impact of unnecessary police involvement. Using critical social work theory to examine unnecessary end-of-life intervention, this paper argues for greater social work activity within the context of home-based palliative care, so that the rights of informal carers to relevant information is improved, and expected deaths at home are no longer considered crime scenes warranting police investigation. (Publisher abstract)
A strengths perspective on caregiving at the end-of-life
- Author:
- HUGHES Margaret E.
- Journal article citation:
- Australian Social Work, 68(2), 2015, pp.156-168.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
The adverse effects of caregiving provided by family members, partners, and friends for people dying at home from a life-limiting illness have been extensively documented in the palliative care research literature, yet minimal attention has been directed towards the strengths of informal carers and their subsequent growth and development. Using in-depth interviews from a purposive sample of informal carers (n = 28), this paper reports empirical evidence from a subset of data analysed for an Australian qualitative study, illuminating a range of strengths frequently obscured beneath the emotional-labour work of caregiving and further sequestrated by the chaos of grief. A strengths perspective on caregiving at end-of-life is important because it helps to inform a reconstruction of caring and dying to include dimensions that relate to the growth of human potential and capacity, as well as enabling collaborative partnerships between workers and informal carers at the end-of-life. (Publisher abstract)