LVR-Klinikum Düsseldorf Hospital of the Heinrich-Heine University ...

Social services
Coordinator: Christiane Sieger, Dipl.-Soz.
(certified social worker)
The social services unit of the LVR-Klinikum Düsseldorf
provides help to people whose illnesses, disabilities and
psychosocial stress situations have created problems in
their own lives and in the lives of their families and friends.
This assistance is intended to enable these individuals
to acquire or reacquire and to preserve important social
skills, making it easier for them to achieve (re-)integration
into their social environments. Clinical social work is
therefore an element of psychiatric, psychotherapeutic and
psychosomatic therapy and, at the same time, an important
link between the hospital and the social environment
of the individual. Social services are provided centrally
for all departments and divisions of the hospital, its unit
reporting to the Medical Director. At the end of 2008, the
social services unit employed 25 staff members, all of
them graduates in social work or social education. The unit
provides its services to inpatients, but also increasingly
to outpatients as a consequence of the establishment
and expansion of several specialised outpatient units
over the past few years. Staff members also contributed
to the development of the concept for the establishment
of a network of intercultural outpatient units. Since its
HealtHcare
Creative therapy can support other treatment processes
in various types of mental disorders
establishment in 2008, the social services unit has tried to
extend the range of intercultural treatment services provided
by the LVR-Klinikum Düsseldorf and to make its existence
better known to the general public. Employees of the social
services unit contribute to the efforts of several local and
regional working groups that aim to improve the healthcare
provisions for people with mental disorders.
The unit also provides internships on a regular basis for
students of social work and social education. The unit
contributed to several regional healthcare research projects
(on behalf of the LVR-Klinikum Düsseldorf) and to a oneyear
study about possible improvements of the healthcare
provisions for people with schizophrenia (following their
discharge from inpatient care) through guideline-assisted
medical, psychoeducational and sociotherapeutic measures
(in cooperation with the health insurance company Techniker
Krankenkasse). All employees are assigned to specific
divisions and wards and are part of the respective ward
team. Their range of responsibilities includes the provision
of individual social therapy as well as group social therapy
to inpatients, outpatients and day care patients, but also
the development and implementation of individual support
measures.
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