Kindred Hospice Research Paper

SLE Introductory paper

This autumn I will be participating in a service learning project through UA Little Rock’s School of Social Work. In order to accomplish this goal, I will be volunteering a minimum of twenty hours at Kindred Hospice. As part of my SLE, this document will provide basic information about my chosen agency, the role of the social worker at the agency and, it will serve to clarify my top learning objectives during this project.

Kindred Hospice is a division of Kindred health care. They are located in Suite 380 at 10800 Financial Centre Parkway in Little Rock. Their friendly staff can easily be reached by telephone at [phone] and they accept calls from clients 24/7. The web address is www.kindredhealthcare.com/our-services/hospice/types-of-care/hospice. Clients of Kindred Hospice are voluntarily referred, typically when a terminal diagnosis has been received and fewer than six months of life remain. Kindred offers palliative as opposed to curative treatment: it is end of life care with a focus on symptom control and pain management. Kindred Hospice believes that “death is as unique as the individual who is experiencing it.” (Karnes, 2009) As such, the goal of Kindred’s clinically-directed interdisciplinary team is

The primary function of the social worker is to “provide the patient/ family with information and referrals to appropriate community resources as well as serves (sic) as an advocate on their behalf when accessing additional services that they may need.” (Kindred, 2016) Additionally, the social worker assists with psychosocial aspects of care and provides in-service training for hospice volunteers. For practical purposes, this means that the social worker’s daily activities could range from referring a client to a mental health professional to training a new volunteer to watch for signs of depression in