Social Services Assistant

General Purpose

Handles pressure, objectivity, confidentiality, organization, planning, reporting skills, persistence, proactive, listening, verbal communication, and resident and their family relationships.

Essential Duties

• Establishes course of action by exploring options; setting goals with resident and their families.

• Assist residents in achieving the highest practicable level of self-care, independence and well-being.

• Provide medically related social services so that the highest practicable physical, mental and psychosocial wellbeing of each resident is attained or maintained.

• Evaluate social and family information, psychological and emotional needs to assist in assessing social services needs as well as develop care plans for social services issues.

• Provide emotional support and address emotional problems including assisting residents and family with difficulties in coping with physical disabilities, fears related to health conditions as well as grief related to loss of ability and/or death.

• Assist residents with health care decisions.

• Assist with personal shopping.

• Assist in inventory and tracking patient belongings.

• Coordinate response to reports of missing, lost or stolen belongings.

• Assist in obtaining resources from community and social services agencies as well as health and welfare agencies to meet the needs of the resident.

• Assist in securing appropriate prosthetics and assistive devices.

• Develop and maintain a strong working relationship with other departments in the facility, and outside community agencies, so that social services can be provided to meet the needs of the residents.

• Document regarding resident social service status.

• Assist in making outpatient appointments as ordered and schedule on-site ancillary patient services to include optometry, podiatry, dentistry and psychiatric services.

• Assist in discharge planning with appropriate agencies, entities or individuals to include agency services, equipment and agency referrals.

Coordinates with interdisciplinary team.

• Provide in-service training to the staff as requested.

• Counselling residents and family members.

Supervisory Requirements

This job has no supervisory responsibilities.

Qualification

Education and/or Experience

Bachelor's Degree in Social Work or in Human Services and 2 years of supervised social work experience in a health care setting working directly with individuals.

MSW preferred

Language Skills

Ability to read technical procedures.

Ability to read and comprehend policy and procedure manuals.

Ability to effectively present information and respond to questions from managers and employees.

Mathematical Skills

Ability to apply concepts such as fractions, percentages, ratios and proportions to practical situations.

Reasoning Ability

Ability to solve practical problems.

Ability to interpret a variety of instructions furnished in written, oral, diagram, or sche...