- Psychosocial assistance
- Care coordination
- Material assistance
- Social and administrative assistance
- Financial and legal-administrative assistance
- Advocacy
Psychosocial assistance
Throughout the course of your illness, you may be overcome by emotions. You may feel tense, sad or insecure. These feelings may be related to your home situation, relationship, illness, work situation and so on. Your partner, family or other people around you may also experience such emotions.
A social worker can support and guide you and those around you.
Care coordination
When you are hospitalized, your primary focus is on your treatment and recovery during your stay. But it is also best to prepare for the period after you are discharged from the hospital. You can always contact our social workers with questions or concerns. They can help you to:
- engage home care services
- apply for adapted facilities for recovery
- put together a care package that meets your personal needs
- arrange transportation
Material assistance
A social worker can help you arrange various things: a food package, clothing, pet care, a parking pass for the UZ Gent campus and so on.
Social and administrative assistance
A social worker can inform and advise you about social services and benefits and the conditions for applying for them. Examples include: declaration of illness, travel expenses, partial or total disability.
Our social worker can also support you administratively with an application. Each question is considered individually.
Financial and legal-administrative assistance
If you have financial or legal problems, you can seek information, advice and administrative support from one of our social workers. These problems can occur both inside and outside the hospital.
Some examples: billing problems, the third-party payment system, paying off a UZ Gent bill, temporary guardianship, a bailiff, your hospitalization insurance, your health insurance, support from Kom op tegen Kanker, and so on.
With financial questions or problems related to your hospital treatment - e.g. questions about your invoice, cost estimates, payment commitments - you can also contact the Patient invoicing department or cel SoFIA.
Advocacy
A social worker helps you represent your rights and interests with various agencies.
Sometimes a patient cannot take his place in society. The social worker will work with him to prevent that situation in the first place. If something does stand in the way of his integration, the social worker can signal this to agencies that may be able to offer a solution.