The theoretical section presents how persons with disabilities can assert their right to independent living, defines personal assistance, and presents all the actors involved, namely personal assistants, service users, providers of personal assistance, and coordinators of disability care employed at Social Work Centres. The second part of the theoretical introduction describes the attitude towards death in today's society, where death is still a taboo; afterwards, it focuses on the grieving process and on the types of help provided to grievers, which are in short supply in Slovenia. At the end, it presents the role of social work in providing support and help during the dying process. Death and dying are practically inevitable in the helping professions. I began by examining the attitude of personal assistants towards death and dying, and their views on the topic. Then, I was interested in their experiences and in how they experienced the dying process of service users. Afterwards, I researched which types of support and help they received when dealing with dying service users, how the field of personal assistance is regulated, and in which areas they see possibilities for improvement. Finally, I was interested in how they perceive the role of social workers when it comes to practising their profession during difficult moments. I conducted a qualitative, exploratory and empirical survey. The instrument was a questionnaire with predefined open-ended questions, which I had compiled based on the studied literature. I conducted eight interviews, seven of which with female personal assistants, and one with a male personal assistant. The data were collected using the interview method and then qualitatively analysed. The surveyed personal assistants defined death as a taboo which they discuss only on specific occasions, most often when dealing with the death of someone close to them. They were no strangers to the topic of death, as they have come across death many times in their lives; their knowledge of this topic comes from experience. They had good relationships with the service users under their care; they had established a connection with them, as they spent a great deal of time together. All of them were hurt by the deaths of their service users, regardless of whether their death was expected. Most of the personal assistants are still in touch with the families of service users. The personal assistants had differing opinions on the help they were provided when their service users died; some of them received help in the form of an unburdening conversation, while others received no help at all and in fact lost their jobs, as their employment contracts were terminated upon the deaths of their service users. They would like to see more hours of personal assistance granted to the dying more quickly, as that would enable them to provide quality end-of-life care. They view the role of social work in being available to answer questions, in providing support to service users experiencing difficult emotions, in listening to their troubles, in coordinating the work, and in taking on the role of an advocate; however, in their opinion, social workers still do not have enough power to make a change.
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