This book addresses several issues involved in home health care for the elderly. It provides a clinical description of clinical social work interventions; it explains how to establish a cooperative home health care agency in coordination with medical, administrative, and policy professionals; and it guides readers in the training and supervision of teams of home health professionals, all with the goal of helping geriatric patients live independently. Rosengarten is the founder of a home care organization for the elderly. Paper edition (unseen) available, $24.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"This book, like its predecessors Days in the Lives of Social Workers and More Days in the Lives of Social Workers, highlights the experiences of social workers through first-person narratives. This volume focuses on professional social work in direct and indirect practice with and on behalf of older adults. The contributors to this book are social workers at the BSW, MSW, and doctoral levels. Here are some of the social work practice settings, roles, and topics you will read about: working in communities; hospitals, hospice, and home health; nursing home social work, administration, inspection, and advocacy; addictions, mental illness, and homelessness in older adults; Alzheimer s and Parkinson s diseases; international settings;gerontological research; policy and macro practice; social work student experiences in gerontology; centenarians and their secrets to long life. Gerontological social work is a growing and exciting practice specialty! The stories told by these gerontological social workers will transform your thinking about what this type of work entails. You will gain a better understanding of the issues facing older adults and their social workers, and you may be inspired to pursue this career path. This engaging collection will make a welcome supplement to the theory found in traditional textbooks. Organizations, Web sites, additional readings, and a glossary of terms are included to assist you in further exploring these areas of social work practice. Photographs by social worker/photographer Marianne Gontarz York are featured to expand your visual images of real people as they grow older."--pub. desc.

Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.

As the first of the nation's 78 million baby boomers begin reaching age 65 in 2011, they will face a health care workforce that is too small and woefully unprepared to meet their specific health needs. Retooling for an Aging America calls for bold initiatives starting immediately to train all health care providers in the basics of geriatric care and to prepare family members and other informal caregivers, who currently receive little or no training in how to tend to their aging loved ones. The book also recommends that Medicare, Medicaid, and other health plans pay higher rates to boost recruitment and retention of geriatric specialists and care aides. Educators and health professional groups can use Retooling for an Aging America to institute or increase formal education and training in geriatrics. Consumer groups can use the book to advocate for improving the care for older adults. Health care professional and occupational groups can use it to improve the quality of health care jobs.

The Handbook of Health Social Work provides a comprehensive and evidence-based overview of contemporary social work practice in health care. Written from a wellness perspective, the chapters cover the spectrum of health social work settings with contributions from a wide range of experts. The resulting resource offers both a foundation for social work practice in health care and a guide for strategy, policy, and program development in proactive and actionable terms. Three sections present the material: The Foundations of Social Work in Health Care provides information that is basic and central to the operations of social workers in health care, including conceptual underpinnings; the development of the profession; the wide array of roles performed by social workers in health care settings; ethical issues and decision - making in a variety of arenas; public health and social work; health policy and social work; and the understanding of community factors in health social work. Health Social Work Practice: A Spectrum of Critical Considerations delves into critical practice issues such as theories of health behavior; assessment; effective communication with both clients and other members of health care teams; intersections between health and mental health; the effects of religion and spirituality on health care; family and health; sexuality in health care; and substance abuse. Health Social Work: Selected Areas of Practice presents a range of examples of social work practice, including settings that involve older adults; nephrology; oncology; chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS; genetics; end of life care; pain management and palliative care; and alternative treatments and traditional healers. The first book of its kind to unite the entire body of health social work knowledge, the Handbook of Health Social Work is a must-read for social work educators, administrators, students, and practitioners.

Explore how community-based networks can effectively meet the needs and problems of sick, elderly people and their caregivers!Social Work in Geriatric Home Health Care: The Blending of Traditional Practice with Cooperative Strategies explores how social workers, aides, nurses, administrators, and policy makers can cooperatively work by maintaining appropriate health records in order to keep the elderly living at home. Based on the author’s twenty-five years of social work experience in geriatric home care case management, this book explores improved ways to organize home health care by use of cooperative strategies in order to assist older individuals in living independent lives at home. Complete with informative case studies and interviews, you will explore useful examples of geriatric social work practice through Concerned Home Managers for the Elderly, (COHME) a nonprofit, licensed home health care agency. Social Work in Geriatric Home Health Care examines many crucial geriatric care and case management issues of concern to geriatric social workers, including: offering meaningful and fulfilling work as a home health care aide providing high-quality training and ongoing education for home care aides creating a cooperative environment by encouraging staff, social workers, and nurses to share expertise with the case management coordinators who are responsible for placing the geriatric patient at home or in a special care facility involving the client in the management of his or her own health care creating concise, one-page reports for each home visit by using a “One-Sheet” to help you extract case assessments and plans for your geriatric client in a readily accessible format dealing with state regulatory authorities and the general trend in home health care to place the elderly in nursing homes paying careful attention to financial and administrative problems within your organization while striving to remain true to your original mission of providing at-home careSocial Work in Geriatric Home Health Care will help you explore a different way of organizing home health care for the sick and elderly at a time when the percentage of people over sixty-five who will require care is rapidly increasing. This important book works to improve the case management of geriatric people and challenges home health care workers and legislators to become more progressive in their thinking about the direction in which geriatric health care should move at the turn of the century. With this vital book, you will gain insight into organized and cooperative methods of providing home health care for the elderly and find improved methods for managing your geriatric cases to give your clients optimum care.

In a digitally powered society, social workers are frequently challenged to embrace new interventions and enhance existing strategies in order to effectively promote social justice. The cases in this volume present engaging examples of technology tools in use across micro, mezzo, and macro practice, thereby illuminating the knowledge, skills, and values required of those who practice social work 2.0.

Social isolation and loneliness are serious yet underappreciated public health risks that affect a significant portion of the older adult population. Approximately one-quarter of community-dwelling Americans aged 65 and older are considered to be socially isolated, and a significant proportion of adults in the United States report feeling lonely. People who are 50 years of age or older are more likely to experience many of the risk factors that can cause or exacerbate social isolation or loneliness, such as living alone, the loss of family or friends, chronic illness, and sensory impairments. Over a life course, social isolation and loneliness may be episodic or chronic, depending upon an individual's circumstances and perceptions. A substantial body of evidence demonstrates that social isolation presents a major risk for premature mortality, comparable to other risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, or obesity. As older adults are particularly high-volume and high-frequency users of the health care system, there is an opportunity for health care professionals to identify, prevent, and mitigate the adverse health impacts of social isolation and loneliness in older adults. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults summarizes the evidence base and explores how social isolation and loneliness affect health and quality of life in adults aged 50 and older, particularly among low income, underserved, and vulnerable populations. This report makes recommendations specifically for clinical settings of health care to identify those who suffer the resultant negative health impacts of social isolation and loneliness and target interventions to improve their social conditions. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults considers clinical tools and methodologies, better education and training for the health care workforce, and dissemination and implementation that will be important for translating research into practice, especially as the evidence base for effective interventions continues to flourish.

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/

At least 5.6 million to 8 million-nearly one in five-older adults in America have one or more mental health and substance use conditions, which present unique challenges for their care. With the number of adults age 65 and older projected to soar from 40.3 million in 2010 to 72.1 million by 2030, the aging of America holds profound consequences for the nation. For decades, policymakers have been warned that the nation's health care workforce is ill-equipped to care for a rapidly growing and increasingly diverse population. In the specific disciplines of mental health and substance use, there have been similar warnings about serious workforce shortages, insufficient workforce diversity, and lack of basic competence and core knowledge in key areas. Following its 2008 report highlighting the urgency of expanding and strengthening the geriatric health care workforce, the IOM was asked by the Department of Health and Human Services to undertake a complementary study on the geriatric mental health and substance use workforce. The Mental Health and Substance Use Workforce for Older Adults: In Whose Hands? assesses the needs of this population and the workforce that serves it. The breadth and magnitude of inadequate workforce training and personnel shortages have grown to such proportions, says the committee, that no single approach, nor a few isolated changes in disparate federal agencies or programs, can adequately address the issue. Overcoming these challenges will require focused and coordinated action by all.