Social worker as a member of a team handling the comprehensive care of a family with a child born prematurely

The thesis deals with psychosocial aspect of premature birth, to which our society does not still pay the attention they would deserve. The aim of the thesis is to emphasise the need to provide specialized psychosocial care to families with prematurely born children within a neonatology ward and to evaluate the possibilities to apply the role of a social worker to provision of such care. The thesis is conceived as a qualitative research. The techniques of semi-structured interview and data content analysis were applied on data collection. The research sample consisted of 11 specialists of various professions involved in the care about prematurely born children and their families. The work partly continues in the research of 2007 where I dealt with the psychosocial issues of premature births from the point of view of parents of prematurely born children. The research results definitely confirmed that striving for creating a conception of specialist psychology care forming a link between health care staff and parents is necessary. Such care should be based on the following forms of assistance so as it supports family function and child{\crq}s healthy development: provision of crisis intervention, support of early relation between the mother (parents) and the child, support and strengthening parent competences, advisory on care about a prematurely born child or perhaps a handicapped child, social law counselling, mediation of related services, support of sharing experience among parents. A social worker is fully competent to provide such care. As the research shows no unified legislation dealing with his/her activities within a multidisciplinary team of a neonatology ward exists. The Social Service Act defines the conditions for the profession; separate activity would probably be subject to special regulations dealing with the activity of a social worker in hospitals. The work may be useful to all professionals pushing for rendering complex care about families of prematurely born children, i.e. care naturally involving specialist psychological care