Social worker service

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32564, 25 March 1971, Page 12

Social worker service

Mistrust, suspicion and ignorance in New Zealand continued to thwart the attempt to co-ordinate health and related welfare services in group practice and health centres, said the director of the Health Department’s hospital’s division (Dr H. J. H. Hiddlestone) in his opening address yesterday at the medical social workers’ seminar on human communications in a hospital setting. The seminar, attended by more than 50 medical social workers from all parts of New Zealand, has been arranged by the Association of Medical Social Workers. It will end on Friday. The key person in the attempt to co-ordinate health and related welfare services was the medical social worker, he said. It was no longer appropriate for social workers to be seen as assistants to members of other professions, he said. “Within our public hospitals the evolution of the social worker’s role has been largely unplanned and to some extent arose as the haphazard response to an obvious need,” he said. “This has resulted in variable acceptance, recognition, integration, and methods of practice. “District nursing, meals on wheels, home aides, domiciliary occupational therapy, and physiotherapy, laundry and equipment services can all be efficiently co-ordinated by the social worker on the request of the family doctor,” said Dr Hiddlestone.