This book offers an extensive range of ideas and practical developing service users' creativity including songmaking, drama, dance, creative writing, music, video and visual arts. It promotes innovation and encourages a fresh and enthusiastic approach to care that will appeal to anyone with a love of creative arts as a means of expression. The wide-ranging approach encompasses many different voices from patients, artists and healthcare professionals. "Creative Engagement in Palliative Care" is highly recommended for all palliative health and social care professionals and volunteers, including occupational therapists, and art and music therapists. It is a wonderful resource for health and social care educators, teachers and trainers and will be a immense source of inspiration for patients and their families.'This book is about user involvement. It is concerned with sharing knowledge and experience about user involvement in palliative care and making it more real for the future. In modern times, the importance of 'end of life care' was highlighted by the pioneers of the voluntary hospice movement. They emphasised the importance of palliative care being based on an holistic approach that took account of all aspects of people's lives and deaths; medical, social, spiritual and material. More recently the work of the independent hospice movement has been complemented by the development and expansion of specialist palliative care in state provision. The aim has been to enable people to be able to 'do it their way' with a real sense of control and to be able to communicate their unique words, voices and experience. This is and will always be a key potential of user involvement.' - Suzy Croft and Peter Beresford, in the Preface.

User involvement is now official policy throughout the health and social care system. Does this mean that user involvement practices are unproblematic? Has it lost its radical edge as it has become an accepted part of service delivery, research and policy making? This important text offers a critical stocktake of the state of user involvement, comprising contributions from both user activists and leading academics. The contributors consider different contexts in which involvement is taking place, both in the groups involved and the activities they are engaged in, and includes different and sometimes conflicting perspectives on issues such as whether we should measure the impact of involvement. This valuable collection will be a crucial resource for students in health and social care and in social work, for researchers developing participative research practice, and for user activists seeking to learn how others have developed distinctive ways of challenging professional perspectives. Book jacket.

This text is the definitive resource for practicing palliative social work clinicians. It is designed to meet the needs of professionals who seek to provide culturally sensitive biopsychosocial-spiritual care for patients and families living with life-threatening illness.

Social Care, Service Users and User Involvement provides a definitive introduction to practical, philosophical and theoretical issues at the heart of user involvement. This book provides an accessible account of the latest research findings regarding user involvement on three levels: the delivery and provision of services, practice and practitioners, and research and evaluation. It explores a wide range of service user needs and concerns, including the latest developments in personalisation and the effect of the Equality Act 2010. First-hand accounts illustrate the range of issues and service user needs which could be addressed by increased involvement within and beyond the social care system. The book also distinguishes between user views and user involvement, and addresses their processes outcomes and impact, as well as their measurement. This book will be a key source of information for care workers, service managers, policy makers, researchers, service users and social and health care professionals involved in social care and support service planning.

This book offers an extensive range of ideas and practical developing service users' creativity including songmaking, drama, dance, creative writing, music, video and visual arts. It promotes innovation and encourages a fresh and enthusiastic approach to care that will appeal to anyone with a love of creative arts as a means of expression. The wide-ranging approach encompasses many different voices from patients, artists and healthcare professionals. "Creative Engagement in Palliative Care" is highly recommended for all palliative health and social care professionals and volunteers, including occupational therapists, and art and music therapists. It is a wonderful resource for health and social care educators, teachers and trainers and will be a immense source of inspiration for patients and their families.'This book is about user involvement. It is concerned with sharing knowledge and experience about user involvement in palliative care and making it more real for the future. In modern times, the importance of 'end of life care' was highlighted by the pioneers of the voluntary hospice movement. They emphasised the importance of palliative care being based on an holistic approach that took account of all aspects of people's lives and deaths; medical, social, spiritual and material. More recently the work of the independent hospice movement has been complemented by the development and expansion of specialist palliative care in state provision. The aim has been to enable people to be able to 'do it their way' with a real sense of control and to be able to communicate their unique words, voices and experience. This is and will always be a key potential of user involvement.' - Suzy Croft and Peter Beresford, in the Preface.

Political, economic, social, cultural and technological changes have led to profound transformations in the ways that death and loss are perceived and managed in contemporary society. The issues raised by these proposed changes are thoroughly examined in this book, with the resulting theories and good practice discussed in full.