14th August 2008

An interesting small study on what skills social workers need to do end-of-life social work
came out in Hospice Information Bulletin for May, which I’ve just got around to reading. Basic social work training needs more on loss, grief, listening skills and holding strong emotions. Personal experience of death, self-awareness and having ways of getting good support for yourself are important. Of course, this is really just aggregated social work opinion; they would want to feel they’re rather special people wouldn’t they? I sort of feel that the young and inexperienced might have things to offer too, and would practice in a different way. But most people come to palliative care social work towards the end of their careers, so they would think that wouldn’t they?

Carlsen, M. S. and Bjork, A. (2008) Factors that aid social work practice in end-of-life care Hospice Information Bulletin. 6(2): 3.

Pics of the rebuilding at St Christopher’s, now under way, in solidarity with all colleagues working through a difficult time, to make things better in the future:
Floor covering:

3rd August 2008

An article in the money section of The Observer today about continuing care, because the middle classes are worried about losing their houses when elderly relatives go into nursing homes with what any normal person (i.e. not an assessing person from a PCT) would think were extreme health conditions. One solicitor is said to have hundreds of cases. The problem for palliative care patients is that they only have a short time. Most palliative care patients, who only need a few days or weeks in care or with a home care package before they die, will probably not be in a position to need to sell their house, and so their families will just have to pay if there is a delay. Quite likely, they will not be concerned to go through lengthy review and court proceedings to get the money back afterwards. They are therefore in a different situation to people with long-term conditions, and ought to be assessed with speed (not that anyone else should suffer delay, but careful assessment in a long-term case is understandable). I wonder if anyone has ever looked at the bereavement service consequences of delay in arranging home care with dying patients.

Pics of the rebuilding at St Christopher’s, now under way, in solidarity with all colleagues working through a difficult time, to make things better in the future:
The day centre entrance is no more:

Looking for the Crown Prosecution Service policies on prosecuting crime against older people (see 30th July 2008), I came across the guidance on prosecuting violence, abuse and harassment of NHS staff, which I didn’t know about. The agreement is: the police will progress all cases of violence and abuse against NHS staff as a priority. The CPS will work with the police to ensure that these cases are treated with the seriousness that they deserve and encourage a robust charging policy to be applied by prosecutors. Presumably, although this is an agreement between the Crown prosecution Service and the NHS) this should also apply to us luckless people in the voluntary healthcare sector too? But typically the NHS in coming to this agreement has not bothered with the rest of us to officious guidance watchers in the police and CPS might not bother with mundane hospices.

The statistics are frightening, although of course they apply most to people in mental health and frontline accident roles:
- one physical assault for every six staff working in mental health and learning disability services (41,569 incidents in total)
- one physical assault for every 32 ambulance staff (1,006 incidents)
- one physical assault for every 96 primary care trust staff (3,445 incidents)
- one physical assault for every 75 staff working in acute hospitals, including A&E units (9,685 incidents in total).
The guidance: http://cps.gov.uk/publications/agencies/mounhs.html