No abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic presented unique health and social challenges for hospice patients, their families, and care providers. This qualitative study explored the impact of the pandemic on this population through the experiences and perceptions of social workers in hospice care. A survey was distributed through national and local listservs to social work practitioners throughout the United States between May 15 and June 15, 2020. The study was designed to learn the following: (1) Concerns patients experienced as a result of the pandemic, (2) strengths/resilience factors for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, and (3) the personal and professional impact of the pandemic on social workers. Themes uncovered in hospice care included isolation, barriers to communication, disruption of systems, issues related to grieving, family and community support, adaptation, and perspective. The authors provide recommendations for social work practice related to virtual communication, emergency planning, and evidencebased intervention for Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder. Recommendations for policy include uniform essential worker status for social workers, telehealth reimbursement and expanded caregiver respite benefits.

These findings lead to the recommendation that the Arkansas legislature adopt an optional reporting policy. There is also a need for physician education regarding state reporting policy, as well as training for assessment of fitness to drive for patients with dementia.

As the U.S. population ages, the prevalence of dementia will grow and communities will face the problem of older adults wandering or becoming lost. Silver Alert systems are programs designed to locate missing older adults with dementia or other mental disabilities. Such programs have been initiated in all but five states. Data collection for these programs is often minimal or incomplete. Social workers should be involved in prevention, follow up and education with caregivers, community members and law enforcement officers. When reviewing Silver Alert policy, special attention must be given to ethical concerns and protection of older adults' civil rights.

We developed a theory of an antenarrative practices in relation to the interplay of dominant cultural narratives and counternarratives of resistance. Antenarrative is defined here as the field of forces Before, Between, Beneath, Bets and Becoming that occurs in the reduction of diverse living stories of Self to hegemonic narratives and counternarratives. We contribute two case studies of the ways antenarrative processes accomplish the hegemony, and the resistance occurring between dominant narrative and counternarrative. In the first case, dominant cultural narratives of homelessness are resisted by counternarrative theatrical performances by developing micropolitic antenarrative threads to bring what is Before, Beneath, Between, and Becoming to the fore, so that alternative Bets on the future become presented to audiences. We also offer an antenarrative inquiry into counternarrative and narrative cultural stereotypical representations of race, class and gender, and offer theory and methodology resources for a more meaningful understanding of homeless life and cultures. The second case explores narrative-counternarrative and antenarrative inquiry into a cross-cultural merger between two companies. Both cases contribute to how the storytelling world is an interplay of dominant narratives and their counternarratives, and the undercurrent of antenarrative processes.