3 Anne's experiences Anne has arthritis and depression. She is a retired social worker who retired early on health grounds. Her assessment was carried out
3.1 Health and low income Health is a very personal matter, but people's health is very much situated in their life experiences and so their perceptions of health are likely to reflect their social situation. Bostock (1998), a health researcher, interviewed mothers who were managing on low incomes to find out about their perceptions of their health. She was struck by the difference between her respondents' self-assessed health status compared to that found by the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) which relat
Activity 6 Having adapted the diamond ranking exercise to the case example in Activity 5 you now have an opportunity to think about how you might use or adapt the sa Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: understand the principles underlying a rights and participation approach to childhood issues and how these may be applied to a variety of situations within different contexts; develop communication and engagement skills that can be applied to work with children. Summary The main acute effects of ethanol are on the nervous system, causing characteristic changes in behaviour and judgement. There are particular issues with regard to driving, with different countries setting various ‘safe’ limits for blood-ethanol concentration. Very high blood-ethanol concentrations can be fatal. Hangovers are unpleasant and are poorly understood. Various mechanisms have been proposed including direct effects of ethanol o 1.4 Type The ACSM recommends exercise that employs large muscle groups, is rhythmic or dynamic, can be maintained continuously and is aerobic in nature (ACSM, 2006; Pollock et al., 1998). This type of exercise results in larger increases in VO2max. Activities that would fit into this category include walking, running, swimming and cycling. 3.7 Ethical practice and accountability: individual practitioners’ responsibilities The dynamics and working practices of many CAM practitioners mean the therapeutic encounters are rarely supervised and no one looks over the practitioner's shoulder. This places the responsibility to act ethically squarely with the individual practitioner. A European study of the practice of CAM states: Ethical issues are just as pertinent for conventional and unconventional medicine, alike. The labelling of a therapy 2.12.1 Integration One factor which is already influencing the nature of the therapeutic relationship is the move towards greater integration with orthodox medicine. Whether or not CAM practitioners welcome this development, it is inevitable. The impetus for this is partly about providing health care that gives patient satisfaction, and also stemming the tide of the spiralling costs of hi-tech, orthodox medicine and medical litigation. Stacey (1988) points out that, when the state funds parts of the nati 1.11 Researching health beliefs and CAM users' expectations People's beliefs about health and illness play an important role in determining whether and when they seek medical care and the extent to which they follow advice and treatment regimes. Beliefs can influence the outcome of treatments (Zola, 1973; Stainton-Rogers, 1991). Therefore, it is important to explore whether users of CAM have different beliefs about and different expectations of health care than non-users. Adrian Furnham and his colleagues conducted several psychological studies 1.2 What is health? What do the words ‘health’ and ‘healthy’ mean or imply? Superficially this seems a fairly straightforward question: for example, you may recognise that a house plant does not look too healthy. Does this mean it is diseased or is going to die, or that it requires some attention? When applied to humans the term ‘healthy’ is often associated with a variety of other, more elaborate concepts. For example, it may mean that a person looks ‘well’, as a result of being fit (doing 1.6.5 RSS RSS (‘Really Simple Syndication’ or ‘Rich Site Summary’) newsfeeds supply headlines, links, and article summaries from various websites. By using RSS ‘feedreader’ software you can gather together a range of feeds and read them in one place: they come to you, rather than you having to go out and look for breaking news. The range of RSS feeds on offer is growing daily. There is probably a feed to cover all aspects of your life where you might need the latest information, and you may 1.5.2 Ways of organising yourself How do you organise yourself? Make a note of how you organise your: emails internet bookmarks or favorites computer files your h 1.3.6 Journals Journals and articles written by academics or experts are an excellent source of information. Journals are usually published monthly or quarterly, and contain a selection of articles providing details of recent research. Often they will also contain reviews of relevant books. They are usually published more quickly than books, and so are often more up to date. To access content of journals, most publishers require a subscription. There are, however, some journals which you can freely ac 1.3.1 Introduction You can find a lot of information about health and lifestyle on the internet. To find this information you might choose to use: search engines and subject gateways; books and electronic books; databases; journals; encyclopedias statistics internet resources. 1.2.4 Checklist of common features Is there any online help? Can I do a simple search? Can I look at the information in both short and detailed form? Can I choose where in the record I want my search terms to be found? Can I search for phrases? Can I combine search terms? Can I use truncation? Can I use wildcards? Can I do an advanced search? 1.2.2 Choosing keywords Keywords are significant words which define the subject you are looking for. The importance of keywords is illustrated by the fact that there is a whole industry around providing advice to companies on how to select keywords for their websites that are likely to make it to the top of results lists generated by search engines. We often choose keywords as part of an iterative process; usually if we don't hit on the right search terms straight off, most of us tweak them as we go along based on t 1.2.1 Planning your search Your approach to searching will depend to a great extent on what kind of person you are. In an ideal world, when searching for information for a specific purpose, we would all find what exactly we were looking for at the first attempt, especially if we are in a hurry. However, it’s always a good idea to have some kind of plan when you are searching for information, if only to help you plan your time and make sure you find the information you need. If I was starting to search for material on 1.1.6 Keeping up-to-date How familiar are you with the following different ways of keeping up to date with information; alerts, mailing lists, newsgroups, blogs, RSS, professional bodies and societies? 5 – Very familiar 4 – Familiar 3 – Fairly familiar 2 – Not very familiar 1 – Not familiar at all 4.3 Conclusion Social work practice is based upon assessments of situations and decisions about strategies to be adopted. Sometimes there can be a tension between the law and working within social work values; the law provides the framework for practice. In the next section you are going to examine the legal structures and processes within which social work skills are applied. 4.2 Conflict and partnership Whatever the professional setting of their practice, social workers are likely to be working with service users from a diverse range of cultures and backgrounds. As noted above, it is part of their responsibility as practitioners to respect and value social diversity and to work with service users in a way that recognises and builds on their strengths. This can be difficult to do in the context of the legislation. At this point, however, we want you to start to think about how practitioners c
Participation into practice
Activity
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