Social services

Federal Teaching Hospital, Lokoja Social Services play a critical role by helping patients and families address the impact of illness and treatment. Social workers, as part of the health care team, provide assessment and appropriate interventions to aid the patient in achieving optimum recovery/rehabilitation and quality of life. This includes maximizing the benefits the patient and family receive from their medical treatments and transitioning to risk-reduced, timely discharge.

The goal of social work practice is to restore, maintain and enhance social functioning by mobilizing strengths, supporting coping capacities, modifying dysfunctional patterns of relating and acting, linking people to necessary resources, alleviating environmental stressors and providing psychosocial education related to wellness and subjective well-being.

Services FTHL Social Workers Provide

Social workers commonly provide individual, couple, group and family counselling, crisis intervention, patient/family education, resource referral and advocacy, in inpatient and outpatient settings. Consultation with medical and allied health professionals is implicit in developing and implementing treatment plans. Social work services can include all or some of the following:

• Patient/Family Education: Educate patients and families to facilitate understanding of hospital processes; increase understanding of illness/disability on relationships; and facilitate life transitions when health conditions require a modified lifestyle.
• Resource Counselling and Discharge Planning: Identifies and addresses barriers to discharge; locates resources; identifies options and available support; facilitates referrals and applications to government/community agencies; advocates for access to resources; coordinates referrals and/or placement plans; assists patient and family to emotionally prepare for transitions; and prevents readmissions for non-medical reasons.
• Supportive Care to Outpatients: Assists outpatients to identify and receive appropriate resources and support, thus enabling increased compliance with treatment and preventing crisis or unnecessary hospital admission.
• Consultation: Provides expertise/serves as a resource to interdisciplinary teams.

Criteria for referral to a social worker

• When the patient has experienced significant loss or changes in abilities that will require individual and family adjustments, such as life-threatening diagnosis; changes in functional abilities.
• When there are concerns a patient or family does not have adequate resources, knowledge of formal sources of support to manage or ability to negotiate complex community systems to have adequate care at home.
• When there are concerns about a patient's or family's ability to adapt to health changes, such as: expressions of emotional distress/trauma; anger; or abuse/neglect or safety concerns.
• When there are concerns about the patient or family's capacity to manage their own health care in the long-term, such as difficulties in goal-setting, problem-solving, negotiating support and future care planning.