Groupwork in palliative care
Two articles about St Christophers projects which have come out in journals that palliative care afficionados may not see. One is the account and evaluation of ‘Planning for Change’ seminars. These are education groups for patients and carers on financial problems they are likely to hit around death and bereavement. They thought they were great.
The other is a study we did on the groupwork in the day centre, which looks at how unstructured and structured groups contributed to the social objectives of the day centre.
All this is part of our ongoing attempt to say you should look at social aims as well as healthcare aims in a palliative care service.
Bechelet, L., Heal, R., Leam, C. and Payne, M. (2008) Empowering carers to reconstruct their finances. Practice 20(4): 223-34.
Payne, M., Hartley, N. and Heal, R. (2008) Social objectives of palliative day care groups. Groupwork. 18(1): 59-75.
Pics of the St Christopher’s building works, in solidarity with colleagues who are working in difficult conditions, so that things can be better in the future.
Tarmacing still.
December 30th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Hello
I am a Family Support Worker (Social Worker) at St Elizabeth Hospice in Ipswich. I am currently co facilitating a psychosocial support group with a R.N for people with palliative care needs. We are interested in developing the group and would appreciate any information you may have with regards to activities and group work in palliative care (ideas, structure etc etc!!)
Kind regards,
Jemma Beighton (social worker) and Gill Parker (R.N)
January 7th, 2010 at 10:45 am
Hi Jemma
There is some stuff in Margaret Reith and my book on Social Work in end of life and palliative care Bristol: Policy Press, 2009 and information about activities in Hartley, N. and Payne, M. (eds) The Creative Arts in Palliative care, London Jessica Kingsley 2008. Reith and Payne contains citations to literature on groupwork on palliative care. Among crucial issues are whether you have a closed or open membership group, closed and open numbers of sessions, and whether your focus is information giving/education or therapeutic objectives (Margaret prefers open, I prefer closed), and whether you have activities or mainly a discussion group. With patients, discussion can be demanding on the emotions of patients and staff, whereas activities can seem irrelevant to people who don’t have much time.
Hope this helps.
Malcolm