Social assessment has historically been the domain of social workers. Healthcare professionals have tended to ask a few perfunctory questions and move on. Patients’ social circumstances affect their mental and physical wellbeing, compliance with advice and frequency of contact with the health services.
Social assessments can easily be done by the patient themselves, a well-informed carer, a nurse or healthcare assistant or indeed a social worker working as part of the multidisciplinary team.
There are a huge number of different ‘social assessments’ quoted in the literature but they are difficult to access and some are copyrighted. They all ask essentially the same questions, which have been collated in the BGS Social Questionnaire and Environment Questionnaire found below. Please feel free to adopt and adapt these to your own requirements.