“Care home let my dad starve to death” Case Study
Over the past few years, The Guardian, Times newspapers and also reports from the ‘Tabloid Press’, have highlighted a series of serious issues in health and social care following exposure of events by families and researchers on programmes such as the BBC’s ‘Panorama’.
These reports, from a range of media sources, have created moral panic in the minds of service users, their families and the general public. This is clearly seen in relation to issues of safeguarding and neglect of the elderly. One such case was that of ‘’Mr Bentley’’. Clara’s battle over her father’s care started when ‘’Mr Bentley’’, her father, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s while she was living abroad. Her three brothers lived near their father and visited regularly, but he needed a level of support they could not provide.
The local Social Services Department, who were already delivering meals on wheels at lunch time to the house where he lived alone, informed him that they had reviewed his needs and they would increase the help they were giving him, which was good news to the family.
It was only when she travelled to the UK that Clara realised that social services were not providing the basic level of care an elderly person should have the right to expect. He was given frozen meals but didn’t know how to work a microwave nor did he have a freezer to store the food. He would stay in his pyjamas all day, hadn’t had a bath for several days, and when she visited she found that he was slightly confused, saying that she had left the living room messy with clothes. This was worrying, as he had always been very neat and tidy, but now, there was a danger of falling over things in the house. He had also lost a lot of weight.
Meanwhile, Mr Bentley fell ill and was hospitalised for several months. He could not return home, as his condition had progressed, so was discharged into his first care home nearby. Subsequently, he was transferred to many different homes during the years to follow. While in care he was labelled as aggressive and uncooperative, which led to him being mistreated on many occasions. He attempted to escape from one care home, but was found and successfully placed back by the authorities. Mr Bentley died just weeks after being moved to yet another residential home a few weeks later.
This story has been adapted from one published in one of UK’S leading newspapers on the front page.
Looking at the key issues raised by this story, you need to select a relevant and current issue in Health and Social Care, examining the role of the media by looking into the different pointers listed below:
Task 1
Explain how information on health and social care topics of concern could reach the public domain, such as in the in the case study above.
Analyse different techniques (e.g. media, leaflets, newspapers etc.) for disseminating information relating to the issue selected such as elderly care or other contemporary health and social care issue such as obesity/undernutrition; abuse of service users in care services; funding and structure of health and social care provision, or regulation of professions.
Evaluate how the different ways in which information relating to the topic you have selected (such as elderly care) is presented, which can influence the attitudes, thoughts and behaviour of people.
Task 2
On the basis of the case study; explain ways in which the media may be used to influence the attitudes and behaviour of people in relation to health and social care issues.
Evaluate how the public can assess the reliability and validity of media information about health and social care.
Task 3
Carry out research into different perspectives on a specific issue relating to health and social care (identify a contemporary issue of your interest similar to the case study or from the range of examples used in Task 1.2). Please note that your selection of topic will determine its validity for unit 6 task 3.1.
Monitor how different perspectives collected from reliable sources on a specific health and social care issue have changed over time
Assess the relevance of the findings to health and social care practice locally. This can include the local consequences of care homes closing etc.
Analyse the factors that have influenced the development of different perspectives over a period of time.
Task 4
Based on the research you conducted, analyse the extent to which local attitudes reflect those found at a national level within your literature/media search on the specific issue in health and social care.
Evaluate the validity of public attitudes and behaviours in relation to a specific issue. Try to evaluate whether the public attitudes and behaviours to a current issue which you have researched is reasonable and justified.
Justify possible consequences of contemporary thinking for health and social care provision and services.
Answer:
Task 1:
1.Information is significant factor to develop the knowledge flow throughout the society and it has many benefits. It is very important to inform the people and make them aware about the prevention of diseases, health issues, habits, healthy lifestyle, available health care services and rights of individuals for promoting the health among society people. The people need to become aware about different issues related to public, like; resourcing, financing, standards, child abuse and other abuses in health care, so that they can get and entitle for the health care services with higher quality in a safe atmosphere according to the policies and standards (All, Fried and Wallace, 2017). This essential information can be given to the people by health care professionals through word of mouth, radio, newspapers, TV, documentaries, internet, nurses, pamphlets, journals, educators etc. All these play a significant role in availing the information related to health and social care to the public.
Moreover, there are some organizations of government and non-government organizations, which have the liability of spreading the required health care information to public, like; Centre for Disease Control, World Health organization, Health Protection Agency etc. For example, the public must understand that where to make contact and whom to make contact, if they are abused at health care centers. This essential information will enable and protect the people by offering protection and assistance (Carpenter, 2010). Moreover, they should have the data related to treatment modalities of cancer. This data can be made available via newspapers, journals, media etc. But sometimes, the target customers fail to get the appropriate information or not able to understand the messages in clear manner for directing to misunderstandings. In this way, with providing information to people, it is also necessary to make sure that correct information is spread to correct people.
2.The essential information related to health can be disseminated to the people via different media like; newspapers, TV, radio, social media, visual messages, newspapers, posters, pamphlets, health websites, social media sites, leaflets etc. These are the major sources, which play an important role in establishing awareness among public. With the assistance of tabloid newspapers, like Mirror, Sun etc. internet and TV, Health websites, important information can be quickly provide to the groups of people (Cherry and Jacob, 2016). For example, the data and information related to preventive measures from Obesity are instantly disseminated via newspapers and the websites of healthcare centers and gyms and spas. These websites provide the information regarding the remedies to the obesity and how people can avoid obesity. In this way, these techniques communicating information are effective, but sometimes, this information may create panic conditions among public by overstressing the figures and increase fear in the population. This can be done for the promotion of website but it may have some negative effects on the population by creating panic situations (Drummond, et al, 2015). These situations are generated by newspapers, social media sites that promotes the fear to a specific circumstance, like; AIDS, child abuse. So, it is necessary to assist the people to deal with this situation by providing actual information, figures and facts via above-mentioned sources, developing messages given to the public health, providing education through programs and campaigns and seminars by taking assistance from government and non-government agencies.
3.Communication the information related to health is necessary but more significant is the way of dissemination and presentation of that information to the public. It may have a huge impact on the behavior, attitude and thoughts of people and consequently the important information must be spread by using most suitable source and manner as per the requirements of the audiences. The needs and preferences change with different demographic characteristics, like; gender, age, class and education etc. For example, elderly people prefer to use radio, TV, pamphlets, newspapers etc., whereas to target the youth, the information providers can use social media sites, like; Twitter, Facebook. For spreading information to the parents, posters, leaflets can be used on different places, like; schools, childcare centers and females may get the information through TV, magazines and via help of gynecologists (Glasby, 2012). Other component is style of presentation of information by using pictures, colors etc. For instance, the information providers can provide the information with the bright colors, pictures and cartoon pictures, so that it can attract children.
Thus, presenting the information is a major factor to get the attention of people on elderly care. If the social and health does not show the information properly on elderly care, then they will not be able to influence the behaviors, attitudes and thoughts of people. The information providers will give the information on above mentioned sources and make them aware about the health issues and their preventive measures.
Task 2
1.After looking at the case study, it can be stated that media plays different roles and one of the major roles is informing the public about current health and social issues. There are different sources and ways, which are used to deliver the information related to health and social care. The major sources are such as; Television, leaflets, educational campaigns etc. Television has been a famous source for collecting the data. So, information on the health and social care issues can be delivered through television. Televisions can conduct the educational programs and inform the population about the behavioral changes and adverse impact. These media ways are the most effective and efficient as researchers have described that the number of television audiences has been grown and there is a high possibility of delivering the information to public. Social media sites are the most used media ways that primarily affect the behavior and attitudes of people. These ways shape the attitudes and opinions of people and have large impact on their attitude and behaviors (Glasby and Dickinson, 2014).
Moreover, internet is also an effective and efficient way for spreading the information to a large population as people are actively engaged in using internet, social media sites and its applications with the development of technology. Public needs to know about the adverse impact of health and social issues to create awareness for prevention. Government and non-government agencies can provide the information on social media, as it is the modern media for informing the public about the health and social care issues (Gulliford and Morgan, 2013). By looking at the social media sites, the people will take next step of taking action to heal the issues, when they have proper awareness. In addition, media can adversely affect the behaviors and attitudes and develop negative opinions about some heath issues, as stated in the given case study. It can lead the people to become more panic in that particular situation. The given case study can impact the opinion of people about the elderly care.
2.Validity and reliability are two major factors in delivering the information related to health and social issue, i.e. elderly care. Reliability is the consistency and accuracy of providing the information and data. Moreover, validity is the process by which trustworthy information is found out. The reliability and validity of media information can be analyzed by looking at where the information is coming from and who is providing the information and how the data has been offered (Hesse, et al, 2005). There are different sources of information, for example; government sources, from religious and political agendas etc. The people should know that the information from government is more reliable than the information received from another group. There are many cases, when the media can provide the information non-reliable, inaccurate and invalid.
The health care professionals, who are providing the health care information, verify the correctness of data. The data users will have the totally assurance about the reliability and validity. The government agencies also communicate the users of information about the validity and reliability of given information. It has been stated that the government is creating awareness among population to make sure that they use correct and more reliable data. Information users can assess the validity of data by comparing the source with other sources of information. It will give them opportunity to recognize any expired or invalid data that is provided by health care professionals (Figueras & McKee, 2012).
3.
1.There are various issues related to health and social care in the country. These different issues shape different perspectives of health and social care issues. For this discussion, the chosen issue is the smoking addiction. For this issue, the research is conducted by using many sources of information and data is collected from internet. Moreover, the information is also gathered from analytical methods by health care professionals. People, who are influenced by the health issues due to smoking, have the addiction. So, they confront the difficulties when considering the prevention measures. There are different perspectives towards this health and social care issue. Social perspective on smoking addiction is that children and minor persons start smoking if they see adults smoking (Folland, Goodman and Stano, 2016). Moreover, health care professionals have different perspective of fighting against different health problems due to smoking. These people are conducting researches and studies to find the effective treatment to smoking and related health problems, caused by smoking addiction. Government is also have different perspective that implements health care campaigns and takes health and legal action to reduce the extent of smoking issues.
2.The above-mentioned perspectives from the issues of health and social care have been altering with the passage of time. Change is very common for each and every service business in the world. So, these perspectives regarding social and health care have been looking for a continuous change as the attitudes, behaviors and thoughts are changing. In the perspective of health care professionals, they utilized unstable and low cost experiments that had less possibility of attaining estimated outcomes. The perspective of heath care professionals is changing with the time. Health care professionals are using unstable and low costs experiments, which have the less possibility of getting estimated outcomes (Green, 2007).
Now, these people develop the information based experiments and researches to given the reliable information. The affected peoples, who have the addition of smoking, have different perspective and it is changing with the passage of time. For handling this, society has only source, i.e. health care professionals. By developing modern health care education, they manage more knowledge and information and in this way they are able to collect more reliable and valid information. So, the public can get more reliable and valid information regarding the health and social care. Now, these professionals are based on more scientific methods, so they are emerged as a major source of information over the time span (Hunter, Goodie, Oordt and Dobmeyer, 2017).
3.The area of health and social care includes various practices. Under the issue of smoking addiction, there are numerous organizational and social practices, which have been introduced throughout the years. The authorities in health care department have introduced different practices for providing education to the people. It is more related to the smoking issue as the education is the fundamental step of executing prevention measures. Cessation of smoking begins with the education about health (McClimens, et al, 2012). Under this, health care professionals conduct the smoke cessation programs at public places, so that they can educate the people about the health issues caused by smoking. This local practice by government directs the health care service to make efforts on smoke cessation.
There are some social practices, which are different from above practices. Population will have to comply with the rules and regulations imposed by government while consuming the tobacco related products. For example, the people are forced not to sell tobacco products to minors (Mbogo & McGill, 2016). There are various other prevention strategies and programs, which are introduced by the society and community groups. Care for Life is one of the major and most popular programs that are run for preventing the smoking among people. It is very effective as it is changing the behavior in the society. It is giving ideas and forcing the people to quit smoking. These are the practices, which are effective and significant for eliminating the negative impacts on health and social care issues.
4.
The above mentioned perspectives have been affected by different factors during the years. For this discussion, the selected issue is smoking addiction. The social perspective of Smoking has been affected by the business processes of tobacco companies. Looking at the economic and financial fact, each and every company wants to increase their profits and revenues, so that these companies are also trying to enhance the promotion of their products via society. Due to this, health care authorities are facing issues when they are fighting for preventing the smoking. The people, who want to quit smoking, will get affected by different social factors. They can be advised by other smokers and forced to continue this. The health care system has warned the smokers about the cancer risk and other health related problems, caused by smoking.
In addition, enhancement in rules and regulations are playing important role in modifying the perspectives of government on smoking addiction (Meingast, Roosta and Sastry, 2006). It has been altered these practices to eliminate the risks, caused by tobacco and related products. Growth of health care services has influenced the perspective of health care professionals on smoking and tobacco. Now, they are able to recognize the risks and challenges and health issues of smoking. They are emphasizing on reducing the use of tobacco products.
Task 4
1.Local issues are accountable of many international and national issues. Attitude at national level is affected by the domestic attitudes and behaviors towards different perspectives of health and social care. There is an effective relation between local attitude and national attitude. There are some factors, which affect the attitudes of people, who are living in different areas. These factors are such as; cultural factors and social factors. For example; people, who are staying in rural areas don’t wish to change their social and health care services. As per survey in the country, different people have both the positive and negative responses towards health and social care (Morris, 2006). There are many regions in the country and all the care centers are not offering the services in effective manner and with higher quality, so perception and attitudes of people is different and changed according to the services, which they have.
Heath and social care offerings is a sensitive area as it is associated with the human life. There are so many issues, which are confronted by the public health. The government has introduced some strategies to deal with the issues. For example, having excess weight is the major reasons behind diabetes, cancer and heart disease. To eliminate the issues related to health and social care, the society and its people should work towards finding a solution and better treatment. While disorder start to spread the national productivity has also affected and it step by step decreases.
2.In some of the issues of health and social care, public overact on the things. It is very essential that attitude and behaviors of public should be analyzed and reliability and validity of their response would be measured in some specific cases, like; obesity. National Health Service Organization has offered various services to the public and given attention on the related issues of health and social care (Munn-Giddings, and Winter, 2013). There are many health issues but obesity is regarded as a widespread problem. This is the issue, which can be seen in adolescents and children in various parts of developed and developing nations. There are different group, like; health care professionals and government are working creating awareness among population and conducting health care programs for encouraging the people towards healthy food products. For developing the public behavior and attitudes towards social and health care issues, media sources have important role. For educating the people about health issues, government and health care government require implementing strategies for public and consider the behavior and attitude of people regularly. The government is using various methods for dealing with the situations of obesity, like; the government has launched anti-smoking program to make the people aware about its adverse impacts (Pope, Ziebland and Mays, 2000).
3.Contemporary thinking in health care services has developed the practices in the industry. For the chosen issue, i.e. smoking, the thinking has caused various changes in the health care related to health issues. Providing education regarding social and health care is very essential to overcome the issues related to health. There may be different consequences, if the public do not develop contemporary thinking and change old thinking about social and health issues (Pugh, and Duffy, 2013). Media sources play an important role in reflecting the issues related to health and social care. For instance, the quality of health care services for old people is not good and they offer poor services to senior citizens. It will be considered a contemporary issue in health and social care.
For changing the attitudes and behaviors of people towards these issues data provided to people related to health and social care has assisted so much. The reports of media on health inequalities will also impact the opinions of population. For instance the population staying in the rural areas doesn’t have effective and proper health care facilities, so their issues will not be solved easily. They still follow the old and traditional methods for treating their diseases (Triggle, 2010). Lower level of education about health care is the main result of contemporary thinking. Nowadays, public is busy in their jobs and they need to give more attention to health issues and it increases the demands for health and social care services. The health care authorities and government play an important role in executing standards of social and health care services.
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