Medical Social Work Unites Client and Community

When the average consumer thinks of home health care, perhaps they picture a nurse visiting the client at home to administer medication, take a blood pressure reading, or change a post-operative dressing. Here at the Visiting Nurse Association of South Central CT (VNA/SCC), we provide those services and so many more, including IV therapy, wound care, telemonitoring and medical social work. I want to focus on what medical social work offers the home care client as well as share with you a touching story of a woman that our social work team recently provided help to thanks to grant funding from the United Way of Greater New Haven.

What exactly is medical social work? Medical social work addresses the social, economic, and emotional issues relating to illness or injury and lessens the impact on an individual’s medical condition, treatment plan, or rate of recovery. Social work can help with crisis intervention, counseling, providing patient and family education and support, reducing unnecessary re-hospitalization, optimizing payor sources, and referring to community resources.

Although medical social work offers invaluable services to the patient and helps to integrate the patient and provide access to community resources, the service is not covered by Medicaid. Therefore, the VNA/SCC is able to provide social work visits for our Greater New Haven Medicaid clients thanks to generous grant funding from the United Way of Greater New Haven. What value does social work add to the life of these home care patients?

Meet Ms. B. She is a young adult refugee, who, along with the help of her brother, sought medical treatment at a local hospital. Ms. B was referred to the VNA /SCC for care of a breast wound. The wound was the result of a botched surgery outside the US that was done to remove a cancerous lump. Our nurse referred Ms. B to our social worker, Soffia. Ms. B does not speak English and is emotionally and linguistically dependent on her brother to help her with activities of daily living (bathing, dressing, preparing meals, etc). In addition to breast cancer, Ms. B has other medical complications.

Ms. B and her brother are in a vulnerable financial situation, only having enough rent money for the next two months, and waiting on the disability application to be approved, which will provide access to public housing. Her brother, who was an engineer in their country of origin, is more than willing to work and has made endless efforts to find employment.

In just two social work visits, Soffia has learned about the background of Ms. B and her brother, contacted the case manager at Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) , identified nursing facilities with staff that speak the same language as Ms. B, secured a free phone for the client, provided supportive counseling to the primary caregiver (Ms. B’s brother) to further the patient’s plan of care as well as provided access to timely and relevant community resources that would help them secure basic needs such as housing. The goal of social work, in this case, is to identify and secure adequate care for the client, enabling the brother to become gainfully employed. Soffia will visit with the client again soon and during that visit will provide the brother with information about becoming power of attorney, so that he can speak directly with doctors regarding his sister’s medical conditions.

Where would Ms. B and her brother be without the social work intervention of the VNA? We thank those who give to the United Way of Greater New Haven and allow us to provide such invaluable services to the Greater New Haven community.