Clinical Research Directory

The Impact of Continuous Case Support and Resource Provision in Clinical Social Work Interventions

Health-related social work fulfills an important function in accompanying and supporting individuals who are affected by health-related, social, and material problems. Despite many years of practical experience, however, there is still a lack of scientific evidence regarding its effectiveness, both in Switzerland and internationally. Reliable instruments for measuring the services provided by social work are lacking, as are representative studies. The ALIMEnt II study aims to further develop procedures for evidence-based impact measurement in the field of health-related social work and to contribute to closing this research gap: * By developing an instrument (measurement scale) to reliably assess the activities of social workers. * By applying this instrument to examine two central functions of health-related social work: providing support (accompaniment) and facilitating access to resources. The instrument captures which services are provided from the perspectives of both social workers and clients, as well as how clients' situations change over time from both their perspectives. This questionnaire will be used in a subsequent longitudinal study to examine the relationship between specific methods of professional practice and client outcomes. The results are intended to demonstrate the extent to which the instrument can be reliably used to capture the services of social work, and to provide evidence of the effectiveness of accompaniment and resource provision under different practice conditions. Investigating the assumed causal relationships under complex real-world practice conditions is challenging. To address this, the investigators use an impact model of health-related social work that was developed in a previous empirical study (ALIMEnt I). Both clients and social workers from the field of health-related social work will participate in the ALIMEnt II study.