Social Work and a Relatives Support Group in a Psychogeriatric Day Hospital: A Research Note

Abstract

SUMMARY During the course of an evaluative study of a new psychogeriatric day hospital we encountered the fact that amongst the staff there is very widespread support, in general terms, for the importance of offering a service to the relatives of patients. A Relatives Group, in which the social worker attached to the hospital plays a leading role, is a major component of this service. However, the Group remains comparatively self-contained, is organised somewhat separately from the main body of hospital activities, and in practice systematic liaison with relatives has not formed any major part in the planning and design of the organisation as a whole. Apart from the Relatives Support Group, there are only a small number of occasions on which relatives have any regular contact with hospital staff. In this note we shall summarise our research which describes the nature of social events which are encompassed within the Group meetings. The research concludes that the Relatives Support Group sustains an ideology of service to relatives while confining many of the practical tasks so entailed to an organisational locale which limits the degree of 'relatives disturbance' to the rest of the institution. An implication of this thesis for social work in medicine is that, in so far as social workers play a significant part in running such groups, their attempts to introduce relatives in this way as significant consumers may, ironically, serve only to limit the impact of this group within the system of medical care.