Its functions include direct attention to new users, support, advice, information and assessment, monitoring and evaluation of the users served, as well as coordination, referral of cases and resource management.
Prevention, improvement and integral help of the patient and global attention to the family, together with the rest of professionals that form the Fundación Olivares team, as well as with external services professionals, both health and social.
As a consequence of the long periods of hospitalization, many families suffer important changes that need the advice and accompaniment of the social worker. One of the aspects that most concern the families is the conservation of work and family planning. For this reason, we consider the figure of the social worker at the Foundation to be of great importance, since he or she covers or comes to solve many of the great problems that these families suffer.
The main functions of the social worker are the following:
– To guide, support and advise patients and their families.
– Assess, analyze and follow up on individual or group problems.
– Inform about benefits, access and use of existing health and social resources and management of these when appropriate.
– Coordinate with other professionals in the detection of patients at risk, analyzing the social factors that affect the health process.
– To strengthen the personal resources of the patient and his or her environment, promoting self-responsibility in the resolution of the problem.
– Support in bureaucratic and administrative procedures that are necessary for the proper functioning of the Foundation.
– To develop the assistance, educational, preventive, promotional, research and coordination functions.
– Try to minimize the impact that the disease causes in the affected and in their family and social environment.
– Contribute the psychosocial aspects of the patient and his or her family to the study, assessment and comprehensive treatment, both in the context of the disease and of the consequences that may arise from it during the treatment process, admission, stay and discharge from the hospital.
To this end, social workers share areas of intervention with other professionals and coordinate with psychologists, teachers, sociologists, lawyers, doctors, etc. They inform the rest of the members of the multidisciplinary team of the psychosocial factors detected in order to establish a joint planning of the most appropriate measures to be put into practice. They are also in connection with the political, union and social agents of the social action.
Within Fundación Olivares, besides the functions highlighted up to this point, the management of volunteers, the coordination of educational support and the coordination of the Home Support Unit are part of this figure. It is our social worker who is in charge of carrying out all these functions in perfect coordination with the rest of the team that forms the Foundation.