Palliative Care, Social Work and Service Users

Peter Beresford is Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Centre for Citizen Participation at Brunel University, Visiting Fellow at the University of East Anglia's School of Social Work and Psychosocial Studies, Trustee of the Social Care Institute for Excellence and Chair of Shaping Our Lives. Lesley Adshead is a research associate at Birkbeck, University of London. She was formerly a senior social worker at St John's Palliative Care Centre and taught Specialist Palliative Care Social Work at Middlesex University. Suzy Croft is a senior social worker at St. John's Palliative Care Centre and Research Fellow at the Centre for Citizen Participation at Brunel University. She is a trustee of two leading UK palliative care organisations and she is a member of the editorial collective of Critical Social Policy.

• Foreword by Dorothy Rowe. Acknowledgements. Introduction. Part One: The Background to Palliative Care Social Work. 1. Palliative Care: A new perspective. Part Two: What Service Users Say. 2. Becoming involved with palliative care. 3. Starting the palliative care social work journey. 4. What does the social worker do? 5. What service users value most. 6. Working with difference. 7. Exploring outcomes: evaluating specialist palliative care social work. Part Three: Developing the Discussion. 8. Accessing specialist palliative care social work: a broader image problem? 9. The problem of referral. 10. The nature, strengths and weaknesses of practice. 11. Theory and practice. 12. Specialist palliative care social work: a service in the shadows? 13. Issues for the future. Appendix 1: How we carried out the research. Appendix 2: The interview schedule. References. Subject index. Author index.

`This well-written book is significant for all providers of end of life care as well as social workers themselves, their managers, supervisors, educators and future researchers.`