As Social Work Month 2022 ends, we would like to share with C-TAC membership more about the current policy efforts of the Social Work Hospice & Palliative Care Network (SWHPN). SWHPN is a membership organization for hospice and palliative social workers dedicated to advancing psychosocial interventions for persons with serious illnesses, and their family members and caregivers. SWHPN champions professional development, promotes research and education, and advocates for policies that advance and support the field. We are the only organization dedicated to supporting the social work professionals in palliative and end-of-life care, as represented through a broad coalition of 1,100 social workers and other health care practitioners and organizations. As a member of C-TAC, we continue to support their Core Principles for Models as social workers play a key role in improving the lives of those experiencing serious illness and their unpaid caregivers.
For the past two years, one of our key policy priorities has been the launch of our National Grief Strategy designed to advocate for an increase in grief literacy, especially to design and provide solutions to address the collective grief needs of Americans mourning the loss of family members, friends, colleagues, and others to COVID. In addition to the very real loss of a million lives; the loss of functioning by those with long-haul symptoms; the loss of a sense of “normalcy”, all of which must be recognized. Coming during a time of tremendous racial reckoning, including through the Black Lives Matter protests and “Stop Asian Hate” movements, Americans’ grief extends across many different intersections. Our involvement in creating a call for a National Grief Strategy is centered around the need for an understanding of “grief literacy,” enhancing our understanding of the effects of loss, of what grief looks like, and what people need as they deal with the cumulative effects of losses during a pandemic.
Our National Grief Strategy programming involves two parts – advocacy and professional development. On the advocacy front, we have partnered with several national organizations, including the Hospice Foundation of America and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, to craft legislative policy and funding to expand the availability and accessibility of grief and bereavement services.
This legislation includes the following four pillars of support:
- Investment in the expansion of services and resources that leverage technology and best practices to expand the mental health and emotional/caregiving capacity to meet the burgeoning needs of grieving Americans, with the recognition that the development of such services must take into account and respect the specific cultural, racial, gender, and community-based differences experienced by different groups of Americans;
- Investment in the creation of services to support the retention of highly qualified healthcare and mental health care personnel by proactively attending to work-related grief and trauma;
- Promote awareness and education for accessing services and resources, promoting grief literacy, and building resiliency; and
- Rapidly scaling up research capacity to better equip our health providers, families, and communities, to better respond to the evolving, long-term grief/bereavement needs resulting from the pandemic.
You can help support this initiative by adding your name here to the Call for a National Grief Strategy, and we’ll send occasional updates on its progress.
– Jessica Strong, Executive Director of SWHPN
