Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Successful liaison between the health team and social workers in Blackburn, West Lothian.

1987; BMJ; Volume: 294; Issue: 6566 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1136/bmj.294.6566.221

0959-8138

Brian McKinstry,

Social Work Education and Practice

Many forms of liaison between social workers and primary health care workers have been described.' 2 In Blackburn for the past 10 years we have held weekly meetings for all the health professionals who work in our health centre, members of the area social work team, and the local officer of the Royal Scottish Society for Prevention ofCruelty to Children.We thought we should take stock of the value of the meetings and look at how our workload and the type of work have changed over the 10 years.Until the 1960s Blackburn was a small mining town.The building of a large truck manufacturing plant nearby led to a large influx of people, mainly from the Glasgow conurbation.They were housed in high rise, flat roofed accommodation, which quickly became damp and uninhabitable.Over the past eight years the plant wound down its operations and has now closed, leaving Blackburn with one of the highest unemployment rates in Britain: >25%.Until last year large tracts of the town consisted of boarded up buildings and a few occupied flats, many of which have now been razed to the ground or converted to good, well insulated accom- modation.The town also includes West Lothian's "homeless accommodation," where families who have been made homeless owing to domestic violence, rents arrears, or other causes are housed for up to three months while they await new homes.Blackburn has more than its fair share of social problems, and it is in this atmosphere that Dr W Gilmour, our former senior partner, started the weekly meetings.