To begin to understand the role of social education in social-health centres, we must leave aside approaches based solely on medicine and biology and work from a perspective open to change with the intention of offering comprehensive, flexible and innovative care that meets the needs of patients at a social, psychological and biological level…
This approach leads to an intervention offered by multidisciplinary teams that work for the health of the patient understood in its broadest sense and where the social and educational dimension is highlighted as an important part of health.
Another important point to clarify is the role of the social educator and the erroneous association made between the social-health field and the elderly, since care is provided to any adult who, after stabilization of an acute illness in a hospital, at the time of discharge continues to suffer from a disability that requires care that cannot be provided at home.
Depending on the characteristics of the patient, within the social-health system, they will be found in one unit or another: convalescence, residence, day hospital, palliative care, … but in any case, there will always be care from a large team of direct care professionals made up of a doctor, psychologist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, social worker, nurse, nursing assistants, social educator…
Within this rather complex context, in which work is also done with the family and around the patient, the social educator divides his tasks into recreational and therapeutic ones, planning and writing them together with the entire team.
Within the recreational tasks, normally of a more group and heterogeneous nature, they are more directed at occupying the leisure time of the people admitted and energizing the groups in order to make their time at the center more pleasant and the impact on their social, spiritual, cultural life, etc. as little as possible.
On the other hand, therapeutic tasks, in more homogeneous groups, help to stimulate and/or re-educate capacities or skills of their daily life that have been affected by the illness they have suffered or by the hospitalization process due to what happened.
In any case, the activities carried out will always be reflected in the patient’s care plan with specific objectives, methodology to be applied, timing and continuous evaluation of the patient’s progress and of the activity itself in order to modify the objectives or activities in relation to the patient’s situation.
