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BJSW Advance Access originally published online on October 31, 2005
British Journal of Social Work 2006 36(2):323-331; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bch366
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.

Welfare Rights Advocacy in a Specialist Health and Social Care Setting: A Service Audit

Jean Levy and Malcolm Payne

Jean Levy is Quality Assurance Officer, St Christopher’s Hospice, having worked in social and health care policy and has published works on user participation in palliative care.

Malcolm Payne is Director, Psycho-social and Spiritual Care, St Christopher’s Hospice and Emeritus Professor in Applied Community Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University, having worked in social work and academic posts. He is author of Modern Social Work Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 3rd edn, 2005) and numerous other books and articles on social and health care

Correspondence to Malcolm Payne, Director, Psycho-social and Spiritual Care, St Christopher’s Hospice, 51–59 Lawrie Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 6DZ, UK. E-mail: m.payne{at}stchristophers.org.uk

Is a specialized welfare rights service, thought important in social services departments, a valid element of social care services in multi-professional settings in which social work is increasingly incorporated, where social workers often help service users with benefits? An audit of a specialized welfare rights advocacy service, part of social work provision in a large UK hospice, demonstrated inconsistent referral by nursing staff, the main referrers, a large workload including frequent complex cases and achievement of benefits and grants for patients, carers and families substantially in excess of the cost of the service. Annual workload for a forty-eight-bed hospice with 1,600 home care patients was estimated at 976 typical cases with nearly 2,928 contacts; about sixty complex cases annually generated a similar workload in themselves. Provision of specialized welfare benefits advocacy for palliative care patients is found likely to meet a substantial need and to require specialist provision. This may be true of other multi-professional services incorporating social workers.

Keywords: welfare rights, benefits, advocacy, palliative care


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