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Facilitating Change In Health And Social Care Social Work Essay
For assignment help please contact
at [email protected] or [email protected]
Change is a process of transitioning from a current situation to a
desired future condition. Whether we like change or not, we are all
caught up in a never-ending cycle of change in our organizations. Some
people welcome change and enjoy the uncertainty it often brings,
thinking that it offers a new challenges and opportunities at work. Others
are cautious about change, fearing that something valued will be altered
or lost or that risk brings unnecessary stress. In care, health and social
care services are essentially about people, both those who need to use
services and those who provide services. People are sensitive to the
impact of change and as a manager I have a particular responsibility to
take care over how changes in services that are intended to deliver care
within the organization.
One of the reasons why change seems to be constant is that there are
many potential stimuli for change and there are several factors driving
change. The stimulus for change may come from inside an organization
but it is more usual for it to come from outside. Change initiated within
the organization is often a response to a force outside the organization
that triggered the change. For example, factors that have a significant
impact on health and social care services include government legislations
and policies. Many aspects of health and social care are subject to
legislation. New legal requirements emerge constantly as government
seek to improve health and social care, often through introduction of
systems to set standards and to control or modify service provision. Like
the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, this was enacted because of
increasing numbers of accidents and incidents that happened in the past
related to work. Its main purpose is to protect and minimize people from
harm. It places a general duty on employers to ensure health, safety and
welfare of all employees as far as is reasonably practicable. This
legislation situates an impact not only on health care industry but all
kinds of work. That is why until now it was expanded its scope, clarified
responsibilities and responded to new circumstances as they have arisen
without changing the overall principles of the original Act.
Legislation also affects service provision though legislation relating to
employment, health and safety, use of public funding and through related
services including education and housing. Recently, the government
commence key modification which affects the eligibility of all non-EU
workers who wants to work in the UK. Those individuals must 'earn' a
minimum number of points. The new rules state the less points will be
given for employees earning lower salaries in UK and no points to those
who are paid less £20,000 per annum compare to the old rules that give a
minimum points for those workers having £17,000 salary per year. It
means the employer will have to pay new workers at least £20,000. In
addition, the care providers were enormously concerned about the
present government removing the senior carers from shortage status
because it might cause damage on the quality of care and in the
business.
Moreover, new technology is also a reason that is why change arises in
health care setting. One great example is the development of internet. It
change the way of sending information to the multi-disciplinary team
through e-mail. Making it easier for senior staff to send and receive
relevant information from GPs and other professionals and vice versa
regarding service user's condition while promoting privacy and
confidentiality. It also change our ways of using records and libraries.
Staffs in health and care services have access to an increasing range of
information that is available to practitioners in health and social care.
Service users expect us to make use of evidence in making decisions and
database of best practice models are increasingly available. In my
workplace, the management use the internet to provide trainings for staff
which is more suitable and can be done in our own convenient time. For
residence and relatives, it's a fact that most of the relatives of our service
users are far away from each other. However with the utilization of the
internet, distance is not a big deal anymore. For relatives and services
user who have personal computers or laptops can make conversation and
see each other with the use of webcam and chat rooms through the
internet.
Service delivery is also influence by use of new developments in
equipments. Like the new equipment acquired by Barts and The London
NHS Trust the two state-of-the-art Lifeport organ transporters. It endow
with a valuable sustenance for patients needing a kidney transplant. It
stores healthy kidneys after they are removed from the donor before
being transplanted into the recipient. This is a critical period for ensuring
that the organ does not deteriorate and become unusable. Unlike before
that they rely on ice to conserve the kidney, the new equipment
maintains the organ in a fluid rich in nutrients and oxygen, which
significantly extends the storage period. For the new equipments, it does
change the old method to a new way that allows hope for more patients
to have successful kidney transplants. In care home settings, the
acquisition of new equipments like the air pressure mattress is
indispensable equipment for anyone at high risk of developing pressure
ulcers or who have existing pressure ulcers. The alternating pressure of
the mattress depends on the weight of the service user allowing relieved
on a regular basis and trim down the number of times a person needs to
be turned, greatly enhancing the comfort of the very poorly or terminally
ill.
In addition, economic factors also drive change. These factors include the
general prosperity of the country and its neighbourhood, the rate of
unemployment, areas of poverty, the level of inflation and exchange rates
in relationships involving other countries and currencies. The state of the
economy affects the level of demand for goods and services, the
prosperity of communities and the availability and cost of raw materials
and labours. The economy tends to move in cycles, but these are not easy
to predict. All services, whether public services, private services or
charity provision, are affected by changes in the economy.
At present, there were lots of changes in the health and social care
sector due to the recent financial crisis that affects the economy of
United Kingdom. As a result, the coalition government have wasted no
time to save money in reshaping parts of the health services. According
to the health secretary, the popular NHS direct services will be
substitute with cheaper alternative. Under the government's plans, some
strategic health authorities and hundreds of primary care trust are to be
abolished affecting thousands of employees and service users. Examples
of recent cost-cutting measures cited by professionals are hospital bed
closures, pressure to give patients cheaper, slower-acting drugs, cuts to
occupational health support, and reductions in community health
services. Furthermore, according to a study, it make known that for the
most part of job losses it involved frontline staff as patient services are
withdrawn. Along with mounting numbers of patients are being deprived
of treatment for conditions such as loss of sight, arthritis and infertility
as the NHS increasingly rations healthcare in order to save money.
But, the spending cuts done by the government does not only affect the
health and social care sector but the life of Britons as a whole. It affects
the sick, the disabled and Britain's poorest families. Among the biggest
cuts are only allowing claimants to have the replacement for Incapacity
Benefit, the Employment and Support Allowance for one year, Cutting
Disability Allowance for those people in care. Cutting Council Tax benefit
by 10%. Reductions in the help given for childcare to working families,
and slashing housing benefit for the under-35s by paying them the
"shared room rate" instead of enough to live on their own etc.,
To be able to facilitate change in health and social care, as a manager I
need to be able to understand the principles of change management.
According to John Kotter, an authority of leadership and change, change
has both an emotional and situational components and methods for
managing each are expressed in his 8 step model. To value his model, as
a managers there must be an understanding about the suppression and
to cause employees emotion. During any period of change, a manager
must deal with feelings of complacency, anger, false pride, arrogance,
panic, exhaustion and anxiety among staffs. These are all emotions that
can challenge and undermine attempts at promoting change. As
managers I need to be able to turn these negative feelings into positive
and proactive feelings such as faith, trusts urgency, hope, passion and
enthusiasm which are emotions that promote change.
On the first phase the model explained the phase of creating a climate for
change. As a manager, there is need to develop a sense of urgency to
staff. That action is needed regarding a foreseen difficulty. This can be
done during meetings by explaining the situation through showing
related videos and sharing stories. As the urgency grows among the
staffs, as a manager, there is necessity to develop a guiding team that
guide the change throughout the remaining steps. Members of the
guiding team could be unit managers, senior carers or persons who have
a relevant knowledge about the changes that occur in the organization,
the ability to establish credibility and trusts to peers, the formal authority
associated with managerial skill and the leadership. With the manager,
alongside with the guiding team, must develop a vision expressed in a
clear, concise statement about the direction in which the organization is
headed.
Engaging and enabling the whole organization is the second phase of
Kotter's model. Here, anxiety, anger, panic, among staff will rise because
the manager or guiding team announces the impending change.
Whenever, change is about to take place, people begin to wonder. That is
why the guiding team needs to communicate to the individual or groups
that are to be affected by change. And need to address these feelings and
help staff to think and act in accordance with the new direction. An
effective way to communicate the vision is to develop an engaging story
that catches the attention of the change initiates. If there is a resistance
to the staff at certain point, a dialogue between the guiding team and
staff initiates a question and answer session. Staffs displays
understanding when they realized the advantage, rewards and
perquisites that they will gain once the change is completed. As the
pathways to change are cleared, staffs must need to carefully choose and
complete tasks that clearly show that the change is succeeding. Tasks
completed provide further urgency and momentum among the
organization and lessen the impact of negative comments.
At the final phase, the action plan is implemented fully allowing staff not
to let up of the change. Collaboration occurs when staffs are willing to
endorse or stand behind the change and displays commitment. As
managers, at this phase, should sustain the change. It is done when a
new way of operating has been shown to staff to succeed over the some
minimum period of time Staffs at this point, displays advocacy that
maintains the attitudes and behaviours supporting the change..
To relate this in my work, in my care home, there are recent changes that
were implemented due staffs failing to do proper documentation. Firsts,
the home manager scheduled a meeting and consultation to all the unit
managers. At the meeting, to develop a sense of urgency among staff, she
used a video based scenario regarding right documentation. The video
shows the positive and negative effect of proper documentation to staffs,
residents and management. In the meeting, everyone was asked about
the ways to improve the situation. Then, decided that every staff should
be knowledgeable and competent enough to do appropriate
documentation at work through trainings and observations to make sure
that they have the awareness, understanding and collaboration about the
agenda of the meeting. On the other hand, the unit managers are to be
the guiding team to lead, direct and show the proper way of
documentation to unit staffs. Before the meeting ends, she makes sure
that everyone understands about the directions in which the organization
is headed and there would be recognition as the best unit that could
implement the change.
Finally, now every staff is confident regarding answering the forms in the
care plans of every resident and certain to do the right documentation.
The as proposed the guiding team use appraisal and supervision to
measure the change. Plus the home manager monitored the change by
evaluating the care plans of the residents with the help of a unit manager
every end of the month for this change to become a culture in the care
home.