Community PedsCare provides palliative and hospice care to patients from the perinatal stage up until age 21yo. These services are provided in community settings to include the home, hospital, and/or inpatient hospice units. The social worker’s main role is providing emotional support and/or resource support to the primary caregivers whoever that may be. The emotional support and processing will range from topics inclusive of anticipatory grief and loss, grief and loss, stress management, role balancing of the caregiver, normalization of emotions and situations experienced, and adjustment to new diagnoses/changes in diagnostic changes. The social worker may also provide some emotional support services directly to patient’s that are cognitively appropriate for matters outside of the scope of the Child Life Specialist. The social worker works as a member of an interdisciplinary team which includes a medical director, ARNP, nurses, and child life specialists.  The intern will be expected to participate, and eventually facilitate, visits with patients and families, complete and document assessments, provide updates regarding patient/family status in the weekly interdisciplinary meetings, complete needs assessments and link families with community resources as appropriate, and collaborate with community resources as needed. Possible group facilitation or co-facilitation. This is not an exhaustive list.

Special placement information:
Accepting MSW 2nd-year/Advanced Standing (clinical) students. Full- and part-time positions available.
Agency hours: 8:30AM-5:00PM, Monday-Friday. Interns are expected to work at least 2 to 3 days per week with one of those days being Thursday as that is when interdisciplinary meetings occur. Occasionally there may be some evening hour need due to a death that occurs after hours or other possible emergent need. PedsCare also holds events for our families which often take place either on the weekend or after hours. Interns are encouraged to attend these events.
Transportation required. Travel reimbursement not available. Public transportation would not be sufficient due to the amount of travel to and from patients’ homes and other community locations.
Video-/Audio-taping not permitted.