Social Workers in Palliative Care: Added Value, Barriers to Involvement, and Recommendations to Overcome Them

Involving social workers has added value for palliative care. Social workers address the social dimension of the end-of-life and the influence of social determinants of health on the end-of-life phase. In doing so, they can substantially contribute to revaluing the social and relational dimension of palliative care as well as to the evolution toward proactive and integrated palliative care services. Yet, multiple barriers for adequate social work involvement in palliative care exist on the micro, meso, and macro level. Therefore, a three-level strategy involving multiple actors, i.e., social workers, education managers, employers, and policy-makers, is proposed. This strategy focuses on strengthening the end-of-life content in social work education, clarifying social workers’ role to draw up job descriptions lending to palliative care within various types of organizations and settings, and implementing overarching care practices and policies facilitating social work involvement.