Need seen for on-site social workers at GPs

December 8th, 2011
[by David Armstrong]

Jolene Salmond

An on-site social worker at GP clinics such as Greenwood Health can provide valuable services to patients with wider needs, according to a report from Jolene Salmond about her recent student work placement at the clinic.

Jolene presented her findings to the December Community & Whanau meeting held yesterday, which was attended by 23 of Motueka's leading community workers. Her detailed and well researched report had earlier received an award at the Community Researchers Conference in Auckland.

She did a 14-week, four days a week placement at Greenwood Health this year, during which time she worked with 32 patients who were referred to her because their GP thought there were other, wider issues affecting their health that needed investigation and follow-up.

She told the meeting that most of the patients she worked with were males, mostly living alone, who engaged with the service easily. For many, the only contacts they had with the outside world were with official bodies such as WINZ or a doctor, and they were socially isolated.

Jolene found lots of what she called "system stress" - the battle to handle the requirements and forms that official bodies needed them to fill, or trying to understand and remember the information and instructions they received.

Her findings indicated that the situations in which an on-site social worker could offer most benefit were:

People with lower-level or borderline mental illness such as anxiety, early depression and lack of motivation, who seem to respond well when someone can work with them to develop written plans of action to tackle tasks one at a time.
People who are socially isolated.
People with co-existing health disorders, who may have seen their GP for one health issue but also needed help with other elements of disorder or lack of wellness in their lives.
Older people who are vulnerable. Jolene found that often they would decline services several times before agreeing with someone they have come to trust to check some things out.
People in financial stress. She said that all bar two of her referrals were on benefits of some kind, and many were finding it hard to move from invalids to sickness benefits without the availability of some forms of suitable and flexible part-time work.

The key to the task, she said, was having someone on site to handle immediate needs while the patient is still there with the GP or nurse, rather than waiting till later to tee up some social work services, and perhaps see the patient slip through the cracks. The social worker can then refer the patient to specific agencies if needed.

Jolene said the feedback from Greenwood Health staff gave her the impression that they would like to continue with such a service, but would need a permanent structure within which to work plus, of course, some funding around it. She believed a GP social work service could initially begin as a shared service between all GP clinics in Motueka, and even include one day a week in Golden Bay.

Read Jolene's full report here (a 500Kb PDF file).

Jolene now has a full-time job with Barnados Nelson.

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