The social service is the contact point for all patients and relatives in social, family and professional matters, both for the current treatment period and for planning post-operative help.

The initial consideration here is that social factors can be involved if people no longer find their way around in daily life or become ill. Social work provides counselling on all social and social-legal issues related to the hospital stay, its causes and consequences, informing the patient about his or her social rights and helping him or her to cope with the formalities. It is important to involve the relatives of our patients, as they are often the only people they have to care for and directly feel the effects of mental illness.

Activities of the Social Services Office

The focus of our work in social services is on individual counselling sessions for joint problem identification and problem solving or crisis intervention. We provide support in the prevention, management and solution of social problems as well as motivation work.

Cooperation in a multi-professional Team 

• Participation in visits, team meetings, supervision, case conferences
• Participation and implementation of further training measures
• Mentoring for interns of the university

Coordination and organization of offers of help

• Placement in mental health facilities (for example: social psychiatric services, day care centres, assisted living)
• Planning of professional reintegration
• Development of career prospects
• Placement in disorder-specific rehabilitation measures such as follow-up treatment, weaning treatment, etc.
• Contacts and discussions with relatives, legal guardians and other contact persons
• Organization of help plan conferences in preparation of outpatient aftercare offers within the framework of integration assistance

Advice on social law issues

Distribution of material resources, including requesting and organising services (for example: Applications for pensions, unemployment benefits, ALG II, social assistance, housing benefist, severe disability benefits, benefits from the nursing care insurance fund)

Organization and implementation of various group offers

• Social Competence Training
• Cognitive Training
• Social Therapeutic Groups
• Organization of leisure activities
• Gerontopsychiatric afternoons
• Management of the existing self-help groups with different disorder patterns and target groups
• Patient Club
• Psychosis Seminar
• Groups of relatives

Outreach activities

• Home visits
• Accompaniment to authorities, employers, counseling centers and other mental health facilities

Administrative activities

• Participation in committees related to the field of work
  • For example in various committees of the Psychosocial Working Group, Cooperation Conference, in the Association for Social Services in Hospitals, on the board of the German Society for Social Psychiatry

Public relations

• Organization and realization of the patient summer party
• Management and implementation of the psychosis seminar
• Co-organisation and realisation of the annual Day of Mental Disability in Magdeburg

Contact Persons:

Antje Klein
Dipl. - Social pedagogue

Tel:      0391-67-13490
Fax:     0391-67-13373

Clinic for Psychiatry Ward 1

Silke Hoffmann
Dipl. - Social pedagogue

Tel:      0391-67-14254
Fax:     0391-67-21054

Clinic for Psychiatry Ward 2

Janine Ahrendt

Social pedagogue

Tel:      0391-67-21052
Fax:     0391-67-13373

Clinic for Psychiatry Ward 3

Frances Höfflin
Dipl. - Social pedagogue

Tel:      0391-67-14199
Fax:     0391-67-13373

Clinic for Psychiatry Ward 4