Suchergebnisse

Planning discharge from a psychiatric hospital from the social workers' perspective
Planning discharge is the central task of social workers in a psychiatric hospital. Effective hospital discharge planning is a team process based on assessing needs and finding suitable responses to them. The research results show considerable inconsistency in this area, as the process of discharge planning is initiated at different times. It is especially the users' poor health that does not allow their wishes and needs to be consistently considered, and prevents user participation and autonomy. Consequently, patronizing practices are inevitable. Being treated in a psychiatric hospital is still associated with considerable stigma. The research findings show that social workers feel as equal members of department teams and face plenty of ethical dilemmas at their work. Undergraduate studies have equipped social workers with a wide specter of theoretical and practical knowledge; however, they would like the study programme to be supplemented with health care topics.

Responses of social work to measures for containing the Covid-19 epidemic in homes for old people
The first part of the article shows how the covid-19 epidemic revived ideas about the development of social work with old people. More frequent violations of human rights, increasing discrimination of old people, and searching for answers to the increasingly severe hardships of the social isolation of the old people – these are topics that call for the establishment of specialization for social work with old people. The development of specialized knowledge also benefits the development of social work in homes for old people. Some key practices for the development of new areas of social work in homes are shown. In the central part of the paper, research with social workers in Slovenian homes is described and the results of the epidemic's impact on social work are presented. The article presents the key challenges for social work, how social work maintains its role at organizing institutional care and what are the most pressing ethical dilemmas of social work. Both the shortcomings and advantages of social work are shown in order to recognize the existing risks for social work as an opportunity for further development of the profession.

An overview of the results of the final theses of students of the Faculty of Social Work on social work with people with dementia
A meta-analysis of students' theses from the past five years (2016–2020) on the topic of social work with people with dementia is presented. Among the themes explored, work in institutions as well as work in the family setting of people with dementia predominate; community work topics emerge to a lesser extent. Thus, the role of social work and the use of social work methods are researched somewhat more in institutions, but again, only in individual institutions. However, this topic does not appear in research on people with dementia in the home setting. Most research is qualitative and based on non-random convenience samples using interviews as the method of data collection. Often, students explore the challenges and needs of those involved in caring for people with dementia, but with less emphasis on numbers. In the future, the focus will need to be on research on community and on (social) work with people with dementia in their home environments, and the use of social work methods and other forms of work with people with dementia need to be explored in more depth.