How do social workers help with the transition from hospital to home after a spinal cord injury?

They help you from the day you enter into the rehabilitation program, that’s a process that goes on, and on and on until your wheels are out the door. It’s a social worker learning about your community if we don’t know about your community, the particulars—are there any paved roads near your house? Can you get on a sidewalk and go downtown? How near are you to services? Do you have a school system that can pick you up if you have to go to school? All of those are very individual about who you are and where you live, and the social worker is there to learn from you and then help you find the resources that might meet your goal to go home.

Often in the hospital setting–it can be a fantasyland in some ways because everyone knows what spinal cord injury is or the rehab process is. You get home and you feel very alone in that process. It’s just you and your family, and you might be dealing with a home-healthcare agency or caregivers that don’t know what spinal cord injury is, and it’s on you to provide that information. And it can feel very alone. I’d say that’s one of the things that’s very important for the rehab team and the social worker to emphasize to the patient and family that it’s on you to provide that education to the home-healthcare agency, the community, the family members, that you’re going to have to provide that education for folks.