CAPACITY BUILDING OF VOLUNTEER SOCIAL WORKERS: A CASE STUDY OF SOCIAL CARE FOR OLDER PATIENTS AFFECTED BY THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN THE NEW NORMAL ERA

Abstract

Capacity Building of Volunteer Social Workers' is a program under the project 'Capacity Building of Social Workers' aiming to train 314 volunteer social workers (VSWs) to be able to provide a social care model to empower patients, especially the older persons and their families who were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The training program consists of 4 counselling courses, both online and E- learning, which focus on upskilling, counselling and empowerment The project has provided an online system to work with 1,465 patients. Only 17 intense cases (1.2 %) were found during the first wave of the outbreaks which needed urgent social support. VSWs played their role in creating and implementing social service menus and in conducting referrals in order to provide access to services according to their specific needs.The study reveals that the older patients were only slightly infected and therefore were able to return to work quickly. However, they showed great concern about dying if infected and also harbored misunderstandings related to vaccinations. Volunteers provided knowledge and training for the older persons and their families in terms of skills in social care, such as observing symptoms, informing healthcare officers when the older person seems sick, reporting the situation to the health assurance system (1330),and introducing the affected to online health consultations. The program also includes skills training for VSWs to be able to provide survival kits, such as an oxygen monitoring device, medicine, as well as arrangements of access to a hospital or health center, and to help communities to create strategies to tackle a rapid increase of patients. Lessons learned from this project include the importance of developing social work patterns for the older persons and their families through online systems, in particular data registration through a digital platform which facilitates data integration, arrangement and analysis and subsequently leads to the production of an appropriate and timely social care plan for the older persons and their families. This allows social workers from all institutions to work under the same platform and reflects a significant change in social workers' mindset in providing effective care to the older persons and their families in the new normal of their daily lives.