2.3 Making choices and developing a personal care plan The social work task of supporting a person's admission to care involves many skills. Social workers must be able to assess the person's needs and coping mechanisms, and the quality of provision to meet needs. They must be familiar with the National Care Standards for their nation. To liaise effectively with service users, families, home providers and other professionals involved in assessment, good communication and negotiating skills are essential. If there is a need for residential c
References 2.1 Case study: Redcar & Cleveland Mind This case study introduces you to Jane Reast, manager of Redcar & Cleveland Mind, the organisation' members, and the works of its various projects. You will shortly be watching three videos, which will give you an opportunity to see consultation in action. The mental health case study is based at Redcar & Cleveland Mind, a voluntary sector, community-based mental health organisation in north-east England. It provides a range of services and activities, working with several organisations Acknowledgements The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (Creative Commons licence). See Terms and conditions. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to use material in this unit: Summary This unit has introduced you to some important and challenging ideas in social work theory and practice. We have developed the ideas of critical practice to demonstrate, through a constructive approach, that social work theory and practice are closely interlinked. In a fine-grained examination of an interaction, theoretical perspectives can be ‘pulled’ from an analysis of ‘talk’ or the communication and language used in a social work interview, as the reading by Cooper (2008) i 2.2 What is constructive social work? Read the following article: ‘What do we mean by “Constructive social work”?’ While you're reading, make notes on the theoretical and philosophica 3 Peter, Roger, Rachel, Jenny and Veera 1 LETS: A community development You will shortly be listening to a sequence of audio clips, which focus on the use of LETS as a community development tool. Should LETS come ‘from above’ or ‘from the grassroots’? Principles of self-help and co-operation work well in neighbourhoods and communities where there are resources and supportive networks. However, even in strongly cohesive communities, some people may find it difficult to join in, for reasons of disability, age or marginal status. In communities that ar 2 Gaynor and Liz comment on Brian and Sylvia's situation At the time of the recording, Gaynor was a social worker employed by social services. She specialised in working with older people. Liz was an occupational therapist also employed by social services. Both had extensive experience of carrying out assessments under the NHS and Community Care Act 1990. 4 Audio clip 1: John In this first clip, Julia Johnson, from the Open University, talks to John, who had been sleeping rough in the city and living in an abandoned van in a car park for three weeks. At the time of the interview, John was 43. He was born in a town near Swansea, but had spent much of his life in institutions. His childhood was spent in a large ‘mental handicap’ hospital, which has now closed. Some years after his discharge, he and his brother were arrested, and subsequently imprisoned for 3.3 Health and ethnicity Clearly ethnicity, religion and culture have a great deal of influence on the way people view health. It was noted in the introduction to Section 2 that most of the early work was on health beliefs and that it was anthropological, focusing on ‘other’ cultures. Britain is a multicultural, multiracial society, yet attention 2 Accounting for health Until relatively recently most of the information available to us about how people think about health and illness was concerned with non-Western societies. There was a time when a search in a good anthropological library in Britain would reveal more about the everyday health beliefs of the peoples of, say, African, Asian or South American countries than could be discovered about the everyday health beliefs of the people of the British Isles. Good (1994), in his book Medicine, Rationality a Activity 5 This activity is an opportunity to reflect on how you might adapt and use the ideas introduced in Activity 4. Imagine you are running a summer holiday Introduction The aim of this learning guide is to help you develop a critical understanding of the values, skills and methods associated with children’s participation. You will be encouraged to reflect upon and creatively apply the experiences of children and practitioners to new participatory contexts. There are six activities in this unit: 2 Social work skills: empowerment and advocacy Qualified social workers are expected to have the necessary skills to empower service users to participate in assessments and decision making and also to ensure that service users have access to advocacy services if they are unable to represent their own views. The requirement for these skills can be found in the key role ‘Support, representation and advocacy’. Both empowerment and advocacy are concerned with power and the ways in which it is distributed between people. Empowerment and ad 1.2 Boundaries between mental health and illness What do you think it means if someone is described as ‘mentally healthy’? Think of all the different ways of describing ‘mental he Revision questions Drinking alcohol produces a complex set of effects on a number of body systems. (a) On which system are the main acute effects most likely to lead to sudden death, and why? 1.6.2 Treating alcohol-related liver disorders Although considerable progress has been made in the treatment of many other chronic medical conditions, scant progress has been made in the treatment of cirrhosis. In over 8000 people admitted to hospitals in the Oxford region of the UK with liver cirrhosis during a 30-year observation period, 34 per cent had died one year after their admission and this death rate remained more or less constant (Roberts et al., 2005). The largely pessimistic view of the failure of treatment of liver dam 5.2 The developmental needs of the child The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (DH, 2000) emphasises the need for a thorough understanding of child development. There has been extensive and sometimes contradictory research into how children develop and the factors that influence their development. Aldgate (2004) outlines the development-ecological model for understanding child development, which recognises the importance of comprehending both the genetic and the ecological factors that influence dev 2.4.3 Ethics and accountability Ethics is one aspect of values. One way of understanding ethics is in terms of the resolution of professional moral dilemmas. Social workers frequently play an important part in resolving such moral dilemmas, for example when making decisions involving risk, protection and restriction of liberty. The way in which you act in these situations should be guided by something beyond your personal beliefs alone. You have to be aware of the publicly stated values of your agency and make skilful judge
Acknowlegements
Author(s):
Activity 3
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Adapting participatory methods
Activity 1: What is mental ‘health’?
Question 1
