Answer

Facilitating change in health and social care

Task 1

Introduction

According to The Kingsfund (2012), ‘This paper (the first in a series on the future of health and social care in England) explores how the current health and social care delivery system has failed to keep pace with the population’s needs and expectations’. This is because the Health and social care services does not always amendments based on the old technology; which ends costing the NHS money. But rather the NHS can make changes by way of making something different by adding some alterations to the things that you already have in life. Change does not always mean turning your back on the old things and replacing them with new things or ideas but rather some amendments could be made in the organisational structure to improve their quality of services to both employees and service users. This in one way or the other will be able to help improve the lifestyle, health and wellbeing of the people who use services.

Explain the key factors that drive change in health and social care services

There are a of lot reasons that bring changes in the health and social care services may include:

UN Convention on Human Rights, some of their main principles to promote universal interdependence and indivisibility, equality and non-discrimination.

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 2) ‘Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status’. My organisation makes sure each and every residents are given the right treatment in accordance to their human rights without being discriminated regardless of their cultural needs or illnesses. In 2009, The commission of Rights made a review in accordance to The Equality and Human Rights Commission (2007), ‘The Commission brings together the work of the three previous equality commissions (the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality and the Disability Rights Commission). It also takes on responsibility for the other aspects of equality: age, sexual orientation and religion or belief, and has a mandate to promote understanding of the HRA’.

In order to review strategies that are used in delivering our services, we speak to service users every year to make sure they are happy with the service we are providing and if we identify any concerns, their responses are dealt with immediately. These feedback is also monitored to develop reviews on them continuously. This is to test whether the strategies that were being used to make the changes are working or not. For instance, if a service user feels he or she is left out because during Christmas, the care home is being decorated and celebrated, why can’t the care home do the same thing for Muslims or Hindus since we are living in a diverse society?. Therefore, the organisation have to put strategies in place by asking each service user their religious believes. So that a service user who is Hindu will be able to celebrate occasion such as, Diwali. As a service provider there is the need for all members in the home to recognize and respect our differences and celebrate it. In this way we the carers and service users will be able to learn other people’s culture; so that we will not offend them in one way or the other when making conversations.

According to Donald and Watson (2008), ‘The human rights requirement for transparency has been shown to result in better outcomes for service users, while also providing a clear ‘audit trail’ to protect public authorities from potential legal challenge’. Promoting inclusive practice will help to also avoid discrimination against people or treat service users unfairly on the basis of these differences and that negative stereotypes will be challenged while doing this. This will help service users to feel safe and thinks that he or she is in a secure environment.

Legislations: Legislations are laws that are made to help protect people. According to the Social Care Institute for Excellence (2013), ‘Safe practice is very important to the promotion of dignity in care. There are a number of legislative measures and regulations to support health and safety at work. These are intended to protect people in work, those using services and the wider public’. Health and social care are being regulated by government policies and procedures in order to promote a safer working environment and reduce the potential risks from occurring. But in some cases, new legislations are introduced into the health service to modify service provisions. An example is the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974), ‘The Act covers a wide range of issues relating to workplace health, safety and welfare across different sectors. Statutory instruments have developed to support the implementation of the Act and provide an interface with European regulations’. The Health and Social Executive (2011), ‘holds enforcement powers which can result in unlimited fines and prison sentences’. This legislation was introduced to minimize accidents and incidents from happening in the workplace. However, any employer or employee who go contrary to this legislation could be breaking the law and will be accountable for.

New Technology: Dr Nick Sevdalis and James Green (2013), led researchers at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery and Kings College. The developed an ‘online assessment and feedback tool’, which has been launched by Public Health England (2014). This tool is purposely designed to meet the needs of cancer Multi-Disciplinary Teams (MDTs). These researchers believe that ‘it has wider applications, across multiple healthcare settings, including long-term conditions, to deliver meaningful improvements to team working and patient care’. By using new technology in MDT working, a team is likely to be more efficient. It will also help professionals to generate and shared knowledge gained to improve the outcomes of patients. With service users, who don’t get early appointment to visit their GP’s, if they are experiencing any signs of health risk, which might lead to late diagnose of an illness. But with this tool, it will potentially help with early diagnosed of an illness.

Assess the challenges that key factors of change brings to health and social care services

According to the Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (2015), Human resources priorities are ‘in relation to attracting, retaining, valuing and developing our workforce in order to meet its priorities’. But in a case where there are changes in how services are been delivered, organizations are likely to experience human resource issues and resistance to change.

Human resource issues is one of the major issues in the health and social care environment. Issues such as, shortage of employees due to financial problems and also taken on additional responsibility; by doing extra work to help the health system. A friend can sometimes persuade another to leave his or her care job to work for the business sector and the person will do exactly that. In one way or the other, humans have a way of influencing each other whether in a good or bad way.

Resistance to change occurs when one struggles to cope with amendments that have been made in the workplace. It is sometimes very difficult to adjust to changes and can also threaten businesses. The employer of my workplace sold the business to a different owner so we had to work under a different management. At first, we were uncomfortable due to sudden change. Many employees resisted the changes made by the new owner so they left and the new owner has to spend money advertising for new staff. In order for me to measure recent changes in the health and social care environment, there is the need for me to research and gather past information prior to the occurrence of the changes. This research will have to focus on the health system in the institution. When I take my workplace for instance, when we had a change of management, things were not going as planned. Our tax code began to change, hours of work were reduced and employees were asked to take on additional responsibilities. This was disappointing since the workload would be unbearable in some occasions leading to exhaustion and stress.

Task 2

Devise a strategy and criteria for measuring recent changes in health and social care

There have been lots of changes that has been going on since the changes with my organisation, which have had substantial impact on some of the staff members in the organisation. Some of the staff members were not attending care training because the allocated day and time was not very convenient to some of the staff. So this issue was addressed to the employer for it to be dealt with.

Strategies that were used are:

• The employer started making compromises with the staff members by taking their decisions into account.
• The government is also helping by making them pay a fine of £100.

As time went by, the employer has been making compromises with the employees and also include them in anytime somethings needs changing. Some of the staff members has been failing to update their CPD’s which are been funded by the government. Therefore the government has made some changes in a sense that anyone who start a government funding course and does not finished, will have to pay a fine of £100. This approach has been able to reduce the number of people who does not finish their CPD course work and is also helping to improve the quality of care given to service users.

Health and social care organisations work in partnership with governmental organisations such as, Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). These organisations make sure that the services provided to users are of high quality. This can also be ensured by following organisational policies and procedures, and fulfilling your duties and responsibilities as a care giver. My organisation is regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), an independent organisation that makes sure hospitals, care homes, dental and GP surgeries and any other care services in the UK provide people with quality care. They also provide this in the person’s own home and ensure that national standards of quality and safety are met.

Below is the SWOT analyses we made due to recent changes in my workplace.