What is a hospital social worker?
A hospital social worker is a professional who can help patients and their carer with their social care needs.
‘Social care’ is a broad term that means different types of services for children, adults and older people. All need help from others with their social situation or care needs – to help them live safely at home.
Hospital social workers are often based in a hospital and work with doctors, nurses and other health professionals – to make sure that patients get the right help at the right time.
How can they help?
Hospital social workers help patients with:
- Hospital discharge to their home or another care place.
- Putting patients in touch with range of agencies who can help them, especially after discharge.
- Helping patients to keep safe.
- Offering advice about money and benefits.
- Helping patients to make important social and medical decisions.
- Hospital travel costs and applications to charities.
- Helping patients with any housing worries.
- Offering advice and support to family and their main carers.
How do I contact a hospital social worker?
If your hospital has hospital social workers, the ward will be able to tell you how to get in touch with them. Anyone can contact a hospital social worker on your behalf – for example, nurses, doctors, carers, family members and other professionals.
Do I have to pay for social care?
Social services may charge for their services. So they first look at your money situation to check if you have enough money to pay for the service; and also give advice about benefits that you may be able to claim.
If a person requires nursing care, they may be able to get it from NHS continuing healthcare, which is free if needs are considered healthcare. You can find out more about NHS continuing healthcare on myHSN here.
Who can I contact about money problems?
Worrying about money can be stressful and could affect a person’s health. So it is important to ask for help. There are number of agencies and charities that can help with money problems.
Patients can also contact their hospital social worker for advice about benefits that they might be able to claim (because of their health conditions).
To check what benefits you may be able to get, please click on this benefits calculator link: https://benefits-calculator.turn2us.org.uk/
Summary
We have described what is a hospital social worker. They are very important. Without them the difficult process of getting frail elderly patients home would be even harder. It is important to get to know them to help your patients.
Other resource
If you would like to know about history of hospital social work, there is more information here.
