1.3.2 Recurrent themes When the accounts of people who have described a near-death experience are looked at side by side it is possible to identify some common features. This isn’t to say that all of these features are present in every account, but that amidst variations there are certainly recurrent themes. The following list is compiled from a variety of studies, including the important study undertaken by Sabom (1982), himself initially sceptical.
1.5.4 The patient’s role The patient is entirely passive in this scene. Does that mean that she has no role and is unimportant to the scene? Does her silence 1.5.3 The doctor-nurse relationship In reality, however, the nurse spends much more time with patients and often knows a lot that the doctor does not. Somehow the nurse needs to be able to communicate essential knowledge to the doctor, in the patient’s presence, without appearing to undermine the doctor’s ‘omniscient’ status. According to Leonard Stein’s research in America, they achieve this through playing ‘the doctor–nurse game’. T 3 Summary This unit argued that managers should seek out and listen to service users' views, and considered some of the problems in doing this as well as models that are effective. It is not always straightforward or easy to engage service users in consultation but, like Jane Reast, the practice-led manager will think it is important to hear directly from service users, rather than always having knowledge and information mediated through the accounts of frontline workers. 1.4 Service users' views: What services? When people are consulted about the services they have received they express strong views not only about access to services but also about what those services are. For example, the shift from a home help service to a personal care service has raised many concerns. The consultations for the book this unit was based on and other research (see, for instance, Sinclair et al., 2000) both indicate that (unknown to managers) workers sometimes go beyond their allotted tasks in order to meet service u 2.1 Introduction This session has two activities. Both introduce you to some theoretical perspectives on an approach to practice known as ‘constructive’ social work. You will read and think about some provocative theoretical and philosophical ideas that have an important application to the key practice activities of ‘talk’ and, through talk, the development of working relationships. Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: demonstrate a critical understanding of the nature and boundaries of personal and professional discretion and judgement in the delivery of social work services; recognising the complex tensions between personal and social processes in people's lives; demonstrate an understanding of the complex relationship between justice, care and control and the practical and ethical effects of this relationship. Introduction Local Exchange and Trading Schemes (LETS) expanded rapidly in the UK after the first scheme was set up in Norfolk in 1985. By 1996 LETSLINK UK, the coordinating body, reckoned that there were about 450 LETS in the UK, with 40,000 members. LETS exist in most western European countries – in Australia and New Zealand, the US, Canada and Japan. Their origins lie in Canadian attempts to revive local traditions of skills exchange and barter outside commercial and international labour markets and 4 Comment on the audio clips In the audio clips, Angela Yih defined fuel poverty as any household which had to spend more than ten per cent of its income on energy, (believed to apply to 700,000 people in Scotland). This is, of course, a rather vague definition, one that conveys nothing about the effectiveness, or otherwise, of what is spent on keeping warm. As you heard, many people spent as much as 20 per cent or more of their income on fuel, and were still unable to heat their homes adequately in winter. However, this Learning outcomes On completion of this unit, you should be able to: understand how some of the needs of homeless people can be met. 6.3 Responsibility for health and illness In Activity 6 you explored factors which influence people's experience of health and we noted that inequalities in health are clearly related to the conditions of people's lives, such as their housing, income and education. On the other hand, health education messages have tended to focus on behaviour – what we 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 Activity 4 We have considered the values and skills needed to undertake participation work. We will now consider some of the methods that can be used to facilitate chi 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: 1.1 The biological effects of ethanol This section investigates some of the harmful effects that a high level of blood-ethanol can have on the body: both short-term problems such as ‘hangover’, and long-term health problems that are associated with regular heavy drinking. Whilst this section is primarily about the biological effects that ethanol has on various organs of the body, it is important to remember that the socioeconomic effects of heavy drinking are also very serious (Paton, 2005). Introduction This unit describes some of the effects of drinking alcohol. It looks at alcohol's journey through the body and its effect on the liver. It also discusses some possible beneficial effects. This is an important health issue and should be of wide interest. This unit is an adapted extract from the Open University course Introducing health sciences: a case study approach
(SDK125) 7.1 What must qualifying social workers do? In a historical sense there has never really been widespread consensus about what it is that social workers should do. The last government enquiry in the 1980s (Barclay, 1982) had to be published with two dissenting minority reports. Consequently, the education and training of social workers has seen a changing backdrop of expectations. The new social work degree is firmly placed within a more detailed framework than has ever been available before. This has advantages and disadvantages. This 5.6 Final words While social work knowledge, skill and experience can make a difference to a family, the contexts in which we practise create the processes which, more than anything else, determine the life chances of us all. Whether social work always contributes to the solution of problems or sometimes actually adds to the problems that some families face is a debate which has existed as long as social work itself. On a more optimistic note, in the end, the vast majority of parents will want to do their be 4.3 What about communities? The last activity looked at the key roles from the perspective of Lynne and Arthur as individuals, but in fact it also says that working with ‘families, carers, groups and communities’ is necessary. Do you think that Dev should also be taking account of the Durrants as a family, as carers and as members of a community? Dev's role in assessing Arthur's needs means that he should also take account of his family circumstances, in other words, Lynne and perhaps her sister. Lynne also has a ca
Activity 8: The passive actor
Adapting participatory methods
Methods of participation
