Dubbo Hospital Social Worker Service

Social work is a profession developed in response to its founding members' distress about inequities that lead to disadvantage and marginalisation of parts of our society.

Our social and welfare workers are involved in casework (work with individuals, couples and families), group work, and community development. There is significant involvement in a number of community health based programs such as sexual assault, PANOC (Physical Abuse and Neglect of Children) and aged care assessment.

Social and welfare work services are available to patients/clients, their families and significant others. These services enable them to optimise social functioning, to deal with the impact of illness/injury/abuse, and achieve benefit from the available health care services, while respecting the individual's autonomy in these areas.

Social and welfare work staff provide assessment, counselling and referral to patients of the health service, where psychosocial and environmental factors are identified that may impact on diagnosis, treatment, recovery and discharge.

Social and welfare work practice involves workers concurrently dealing with complex multiple issues and providing a wide spectrum of therapeutic and practical interventions. These interventions include crisis intervention, psychosocial assessment, counselling, advocacy, mediation, case management, therapeutic counselling and complex discharge planning.