Critical Policy Analysis of Health Social Work Practices: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19, Thailand
Keywords:
Critical policy analysis, Health social work practices, COVID-19Abstract
The pandemic of COVID-19 has affected social workers, their family, clients, and organizations in multiple ways. This research aimed to provide critical policy analysis and to identify lessons learned from the impacts of the Healthcare Preventive Policy (HPP) on health social work practices during the pandemic of COVID-19 in Thailand. Primary data was applied to collect information from ten hospital social workers through in-depth interviews. Digital ethnographical research methods were applied to collect secondary data from reliable digital academic sources during 2019-2024. Simple random sampling was adopted to select digital cases. Twenty articles were adopted for thick descriptive analysis. The use of critical policy analysis and SWOT identified three crucial results. These included 1) hospital social workers played crucial roles in critical social work practices both in mainstream and alternative health care; 2) the HPP’s negligence of mental, social, and spiritual welling aspects impacted palliative care social work practices; and 3) understanding of the power relation, ideology, and the forces that produce inequality justice creates a constructive engagement through the health coaching system by raising questions of inequality and oppression based on centralization policy as regards resources mobility and delivery. The use of creative critical reflection improved evaluative system of health social work practices. It was found that the use of creative critical reflection improved the evaluation system of health social work practices.
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