The Social Care Service User Group in UK and its Disadvantages
The topic will illustrate about the major causes of inequality and the reasons for which a particular social care service user group may be disadvantaged as well as socially excluded. The service users are the patients, elderly individuals and other users of health and social care services. The social care organization considered here, as the case study is Cedar Lawn Care home in UK that has been dedicated to caring for older people. The social care service user group is mainly aged between 50 to 100, which are considered as the registered care categories. It is a residential care home and is not for profit owned, which has created convenience in serving the customers and create positive impacts within the society by treating every individuals including elderly people and people who need support equally (Carehome.co.uk 2018).
Often the social care service user groups within United Kingdom experience lack of social care support, negligence by the staffs and even becoming dependent largely on the others. The service user group is within the age group of 50 to 100 and thus most of the elderly individuals have been the victims of social exclusion and socially disadvantageous. Cedar Lawn Care Home is an effective social care home that provides care services to older people and understands their needs and preferences to keep them engaged altogether. The Care home staffs need to commit fully to the service users by respecting their values, beliefs and maintaining dignity (Kluegel and Smith 2017). The more the service user satisfaction, the better will be the chances of overcoming issues related to social exclusion and becoming disadvantaged. Social exclusion represents a person’s ability to be engaged in social, economic, political and cultural life and about the way, they interact and establish relationships with others. The elderly individuals often could be socially excluded and being disadvantaged because of their high level of dependence on others to lead a proper life or while performing a task. Other important factors associated with the social exclusion could be the age, disability, gender, ethnicity, employment status, earnings or even the individuals who have come to UK as immigrants (Durante et al. 2013).
Social exclusion is a multi-dimensional and complex process where lack of proper resources and services were provided to individuals and even they may not have the ability to engage in activities that are available to other people within the society. There are many elderly people who could visit UK as immigrants for seeking the services of social care home and at times, they may even be neglected, which can be a major form of discrimination based on race, religion and ethnicity (Alesina, Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2014). Age based discrimination is another cause of social exclusion and being disadvantaged. Various evidences showed that the extent to which health and social care services are differentiated by age and because of their age, they often face difficulties to avail the most suitable care services and treatment. This is a form of discrimination under the Equality Bill and Government of UK must make sure that each individual, regardless of their ages should be provided with the tight treatment and social care services for their improvement in health and wellbeing (Alesina, Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2016).
Causes of Social Exclusion and Discrimination Among the Social Care Service Users
There are broader concepts related to the quality of life for the elderly people within the social care homes such as retaining the independence and autonomy, proper control, making choices on their own and making sure that the social care workers respect the decisions and priorities of the individuals. Often it is seen that while providing the social care services for improving the health of individuals, they may not feel to have the proper medicines. They might not also feel to obtain the right treatment procedures and in such cases, they could get neglected and the services might be ignored by them as well (Bonilla-Silva 2017). The older individuals who are considered as the social care service user groups in UK have faced inability to access the relevant resources to communicate with the local networks, share and exchange information properly. The entry into the residential care home often takes place because of family problems and breaking down of the family relationships, which make the family members ignore and neglect the elderly individuals. Within the residential care home also, the people face major issues such as the transition from care to independence. The immigrants come to stay at United Kingdom also sometimes face issues regarding the discrimination and this create a negative mindset among them about the country as well (Thaa 2016).
It could be challenged by making sure that the social care service users were provided with good quality services to keep them satisfied and encouraged to live a healthy, longer and independent life. While focusing on the older individuals within the social care home, few of them are socially excluded more than the others. It can be due to the various factors like unemployment, poor housing, lack of proper health and wellbeing, lack of skills and knowledge. The national age discrimination review follows various principles, which shows that the discrimination based on age and unfair treatment of old individuals within Cedar Lawn Care home shall not be included in the fair society (Cameron et al. 2014). The personalization enables meeting the health needs of individuals within the social care and ensuring that the services are differentiable by age only when it is beneficial and objectively justifiable. The Labor Government must support the entire process of development procedures that would conduct researches and implement various strategies to improve the outcomes through support of older people. Few of the activities include National Service Framework for the older people and the Government strategies regarding the ageing and building a better society for the elderly age groups (Dominelli 2017). National Service Framework for Long Term Conditions could challenge the social exclusion and the socially disadvantaged individuals by setting a Government vision for the services to meet the changing needs of individuals and fulfilling the aspirations of people to gain better control over their lives. The Heath Prevention package launched by the Government bodies could also managing assessment of needs within a supportive environment and treat elderly individuals equally to prevent social exclusion (Choi and Dinitto 2013).
Effective Strategies to Challenge Social Exclusion and Discrimination
Joint commissioning between the health and social care will create a vision for adult social care of services that are person centered and effective for improving the lives of older social care service users’ groups. This would also promote management of comprehensive health and social care services for the older people as well as ensure preventing any forms of discrimination within the social care residential home, i.e., Cedar Lawn Care Home (Stephan, Sutin and Terracciano 2015). The Equality Bill would enable treating the older individuals at the social care home without any discrimination and ensuring that favorable services were provided to them for their health and wellbeing. Educational objectives should include putting efforts for changing the thinking and behaviors of the individuals and furthermore improve the social care for older people at the care home. This would overcome the challenges while promoting dignity of older people, furthermore respect the older individuals admitted at the care home, respect their choices and decisions and treat them fairly and equally as well (Carehome.co.uk 2018).
Conclusion
The report was prepared to discuss about the various aspects related to the social exclusion of older individuals along with the reasons for which they were being socially disadvantaged. The elderly individuals were often neglected and ignored by the staffs and their choices and decisions had not been prioritised due to their higher level of dependence on others. The various ways of overcoming the challenges and manage equality to ensure that the older individuals were not discriminated had been included here too.
References
Alesina, A., Michalopoulos, S. and Papaioannou, E., 2014. Ethnic inequality.
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Bonilla-Silva, E., 2017. Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America. Rowman & Littlefield.
Cameron, A., Lart, R., Bostock, L. and Coomber, C., 2014. Factors that promote and hinder joint and integrated working between health and social care services: a review of research literature. Health & social care in the community, 22(3), pp.225-233.
Carehome.co.uk. (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.carehome.co.uk/carehome.cfm/searchazref/10002525CEDA [Accessed 12 Jun. 2018].
Choi, N.G. and Dinitto, D.M., 2013. Internet use among older adults: association with health needs, psychological capital, and social capital. Journal of medical Internet research, 15(5).
Dominelli, L., 2017. Anti-racist social work. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Durante, F., Fiske, S.T., Kervyn, N., Cuddy, A.J., Akande, A.D., Adetoun, B.E., Adewuyi, M.F., Tserere, M.M., Ramiah, A.A., Mastor, K.A. and Barlow, F.K., 2013. Nations’ income inequality predicts ambivalence in stereotype content: How societies mind the gap. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52(4), pp.726-746.
Kluegel, J.R. and Smith, E.R., 2017. Beliefs about inequality: Americans’ views of what is and what ought to be. Routledge.
Stephan, Y., Sutin, A.R. and Terracciano, A., 2015. How old do you feel? The role of age discrimination and biological aging in subjective age. PLoS One, 10(3), p.e0119293.
Thaa, W., 2016. Issues and images–new sources of inequality in current representative democracy. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 19(3), pp.357-375.
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