Paliatívna medicína a liečba bolesti 1-2e/2022

Functioning of social service facilities during the Covid-19 pandemic regards to the increased mortality of clients

The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the most shocking events of the 21st century. It has brought with it a lot of unknowns and at the same time drew attention to several shortcomings that turned out to be crucial. In the first wave, it had a very negative impact, apart from health care, on the area of social services. In this contribution, we focus precisely on the negative impacts associated with the functioning of long-term care facilities, such as facilities for seniors or social service homes. Our goal was to identify and point out how and in what way the Covid-19 pandemic affected work in these facilities. Not only in Slovakia, but throughout Europe, countries were confronted with high mortality of clients of long-term care facilities. The closure of the facilities in order to protect the life and health of clients brought with it changes to which the facilities had to adapt very quickly. Administrative tasks were added to the workers, which blocked them from working directly with the client. Anti-pandemic measures had an impact on the overall operation of facilities, the organization of work and its form. The atmosphere in the facilities was also negatively affected, conflicts arose, workers were under a lot of pressure, they had feelings of frustration and some also depression or anxiety and the resulting feelings of burnout. On the clients‘ side, social isolation was problematic.

Keywords: Covid-19 pandemic, mortality, social services, long-term care facilities, social worker, senior