Nursing Home Social Services Reference/Frontspiece/Prologue

Prologue [edit | edit source] This book is a wiki project. The book is designed to cover the skills, knowledge and wisdom required for the reader to become a competent and confident social services worker. If there is anything you think is missing or not valid in your state, please add your comments and edits. We will use “social services worker” to refer to those who do this job. Social worker is a protected title in most states and requires a person who suggests they are a social worker to be: ·        Licensed as a social worker or clinical social worker by the state they are working in ·        Granted a degree that includes the words “Social Work” such as a BSW or MSW or DSW. To represent yourself as a social worker without the above is to mislead those who you are serving and this violates the trust that you need to do your work effectively. Being a social services worker also requires you to tolerate others calling you a social worker when you may not (yet) be. You will have to decide whether this misunderstanding needs to be clarified or not. As with all decisions a social services worker makes, the decision will be one that seems to work for everyone. It should avoid inappropriate expectations, and have clients or residents feel you are trustworthy, confident and competent in offering services and care to them. This book is organized to peel the onion of the social services role. More general notions of the job, tasks and the career will be presented first and then the book will take more and more detailed approaches to various key aspects of social services work. At these more detailed levels, there may be differences in how these tasks are done in different companies, facilities and states, so be aware of this. The first chapter will be an overview or introduction. This will provide the overview of the role and its place in the facility administration.  The second chapter will talk about how this book is organized, why it was chosen to make it as an easily updated binder and where to find parts of this book that you may use for various detailed descriptions of tasks. This will complete the introductory matter of the book. The book is then broken into parts corresponding the major roles that social services worker will be responsible for. Lastly there is an Appendix which will offer a list of references and resources that the authors have found for doing their job well. The first Part will cover the flow of care for a resident and how social services will interact with residents and other team members from intake to discharge. The second part will cover some social work principles and skills that are used in the job of a social services worker. These are presented so as to understand how to use this position to develop the skills to move on in a social work career and what training that may be appropriate for this plan. The third part covers emergencies and crises that can occur in the course of a resident’s life and the career of a social services worker. This should be read in advance to have some idea of the crises that can occur and to have some sense of the responses that will work best. This will allow you to be more prepared when the emergency happens. Part IV offers some sense of the context of the facility as a business. This can be at odds with some of the approaches one might take as a team of caregivers. Knowing what may create conflict with your administrator and the owners of the facility is important as you evaluate options for care or as you manage an emergency.Part V is not last because it is least important, but it is the most personal and most basic of these flows. It is a cliché, but without self-care, the wisdom of this book would be irrelevant. In order to do our best, we need to be at our personal best as often as we can. Long overtime hours to complete work, intense conversations or conflicts without time to cool down will diminish the effectiveness of almost everyone. This part will include some ideas to help with self-care, but will not be all-inclusive. You are encouraged to add you special self-care processes and routines to this part.   Lastly, we have compiled an appendix that includes a list of resources and references that have been helpful in creating this book. We hope this will be helpful to you. This may be the section of this book which is updated most frequently. Thank you for caring about your residents and your job. Thank you in advance for contributing to this collected wisdom. Also: Please note that this WikiBook is based on thin initial author's knowledge of Colorado's processes, rules and regulations for Nursing Homes. You may need to check in your locale for details of the tasks described in this book. You may have confidence that the more abstract subject areas will be the same for all nursing homes. It is also true that some nursing homes may have some of the work / subject areas assigned to different staff members in the nursing home. Again the work will have to be done for the resident regardless of the staff member who does it.