The Strengths And Limitations Of Personalisation Social Work Essay

The Strengths And Limitations Of Personalisation Social Work Essay With the continuously growing number of older population in the country and the life expectancy that keeps on increasing, the demand for the elderly care is also equally on the increase. Consequently the government are also putting in effort in order to continue improving the service provided for the elderly care such as the introduction of personalisation into the care service in the government policy in December 2007, when the Putting People First concordat was published. This is the reason why this assignment will be looking into this concept of personalisation in further depth along by looking at the strengths and limitations of implementing it into the social care. CONTENT The term personalisation as picked up by the Department of Health and is being used as a term to describe the series of reforms drawn out in the 2007 concordat Putting People First. In its formulations the policies have been set within the following framework of improving access to universal services, the prevention and early intervention, the increase of choice and control by the users and also growing social capital for the care (Department of Health, 2009). In addition to this, personalisation is about giving people more choice and control over their lives in all social care settings. It also means to recognise the user as a person with strengths and preferences and it starts with the user instead of the service (Social Care Institute for Excellence, 2012). The reasons why personalisation is introduced in social care is because the government is against the one size fits all concept in terms of providing care as it has been found to have not met most of the needs of the user especially with the fact that all users are different. The second reason is to finish up the The 1988 Griffiths Report on Community Care in which it advises that social services should become brokers to a range of care and support providers. It also proposed that social workers should take on a care management role.Thirdly is to combat the McDonaldisation in social care. This McDonaldisation thesis consists of five primary components of efficiency (minimising time in delivering care), calculability (trying to get user to believe that they are getting quality care for lesser money spent), predictability (where the care provided are highly routine and predictable), control (standardised and uniform care provider) and also, culture (as part of the standardised control) . Finally, personalisation is implemented due to the convergence of disability movement and also the increasing neo-liberal marketisation. The disability movement as a part of service user movement and the social model of disability have been a really powerful driving forces in lobbying for government reforms. An evidence for this is the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act, 1996 where the direct payments have been made available to the disabled adults of working age in England and have since been extended to other groups (Carr, 2010). The popularity and success has stimulated much of the personalisation around service users and also the development of personal budgets (Glasby and Littlechild, 2009). In November 2010, A vision for adult social care: capable communities and active citizens document was published, with personal budgets and personalisation, put central along with prevention, health and social care integration and the development of a plural and creative social care market to enable choice forming central aspects of the continuing social care reform. In this document too, it was made clear that personal budget alone does not in itself mean that services are automatically personalised. People should get personal choice and control over their services rather than the inflexible block contracts from supported housing to personal care (Department of Health 2010). Glasby (2012) explained that the concept of personal budgets is rather than assessing the users needs and selecting services from fairly limited menu of options, personal budgets start by placing each individual into a cost band and being up front about the resources available. By knowing how much of money is a vailable for them to spend on their needs then allows them and their circle of support to make decisions about how the money could best be spent (by direct services, direct payments, public services, the independent sector, paying family and friend or any of the combination). Some of the strengths of using personalisation concept are the users outcomes can be improved and at the same time, costs can be reduced as people who control their own budgets are able to find smarter solutions for meeting their needs and can reduce their need for paid support. This is possible because the person is empowered to make the better, right kind of decisions, seize new opportunities and respond more quickly to their own problems. In the old welfare system the government pushes resources into those services that it believes people need. Users can only receive little benefit from these resources because it is unlikely that the services are perfectly tailored to meet their needs and there is no opportunity for the user to mobilise those resources to pull in in other resources. However, when someone has a Personal Budget they are able to make quality, efficient use of those resources. Such as rather than paying  £10,000 per year at the day centre and the user will simply ha ve to put up with whatever services offered there that they do not value. Instead, if the user is given a  £10,000 Personal Budget they then can actually spend some of their budget on those particular services they value, e.g. only coming into the centre on the good days. This process explains why people can get better lives with less money as the money that can be controlled works better with the new found freedom than the money that cannot be controlled (Duffy, 2010). Other than offering better quality choices and empowering the service user, personalisation also is shown to be consistently cost effective of the public finance as found by Glasby and Littlechild (2002) that direct payments support are on average 30-40 per cent cheaper than the equivalent directly provided services. In addition to this, it was discovered that carers feel the relationship between them and the service user has improved due to them or their relatives being able to access the direct payments (Rethink Mental Illness, 2011). Finlayson (2002) also suggested that this positive relationship between the carer and service user is central to carers job motivation and satisfaction as in turn it will increase the quality of care provided. Another advantage of this concept as suggested by Zarb and Nadash (1994) is that the flexibility of the service is enhanced. The service provided is fitted around the users time on top of their different needs rather than fitted around the carer s timetable. Although according to the findings discussed earlier that expressed the positive outcomes of personalisation, there are few limitations associated into practicing it. The first one is that it is inappropriate to some users especially those who are mentally incapable and the elderly. It is found to be a daunting experience as they are suppose to manage their own financial arrangements directly which will also add extra burden and unwanted stress for them. On top of this, most of service users are also anxious by becoming employers and having to deal with responsibility particularly when they are unwell. This is especially with regard to assistance with the direct payments managing of the service user, either by family member, friend or support agency on the users behalf. In addition to this issue, the potential problem that could possibly happen regarding the vulnerable user is being exploited and potential for their money to be fraud (Leece and Bornat, 2006). On the other hand, as su ggested by Glasby and Littlechild (2009) the local authorities have a key role in making their systems as simple as possible and also proportionate to the risk, along with the availability of independent support (such as peer support and support agency) and the advent of self-directed support to reduce potential hassle from this concept should any problem arise. Another limitation of this concept is the community care assessments that are carried out sometimes underestimated the needs of user, especially those with mental illness as their needs are subjective (for instance, not so obvious on a good day) and therefore failed to be met. To make matter worse, these assessments are often not person-centred as it lacks of users involvement in decision making thus, they tend to be passive recipients and disempowered. This highlights the need of a better person-centred assessment by the professionals involved as the central element in the direct payments is good assessment. Hence, a better, different kind of relationship needs to be developed between the professional and the users as well as other approach to allocate the community care resources for this particular service user (Leece and Bornat, 2006). Another problem is direct payments and personal budgets are identified as a threat to the professional expertise of the social workers, as well as the longer hours due to the flexibility needed. It was also suggested that at one critical point, services will not be able to be managed properly as more users are becoming employers thus, changing the balance of the services'(Leece and Bornat, 2006). In contrast, direct payments and personal budgets are able to free social workers up to focus on people who are in greater need of support and thus, reconnect their value base and principles of profession (Glasby and Littlechild, 2009). Furthermore, the monopoly of market with the increasing choice through the direct payments is seen to be a problem. This will someway force the existing providers to make more effort to be more appealing to the service users in order to avoid of going bust. Additionally the real goals of these providers are often doubted as whether they will put quality care over profit-making (Leece and Bornat, 2006). The argument against this is that with the presence of competition, the providers will struggle to increase their quality of care along with a better value in order to keep up with the other providers. The strengths of the concept of personalisation as per discussed have found to be outweighed by the limitations that are associated to it. This is also proved to be the case as nearly all users is found to be satisfied with their experiences of using the direct payment as they found it to be more convenient and secure in the research carried out for the Department for Work and Pensions (2004). Out of the total participants, 75% reported to have found no disadvantages when using the direct payment. CONCLUSION The concept of personalisation has had a long history on why the government want to put it into practice as a way of reforming the social care particularly in the last few years when the direct payments and personal budgets were introduced. This was proved to be a huge success with majority of the users are extremely satisfied with how it has changed their lives in terms of empowering and giving them better quality of choices. Moreover, it was also found to be cost-effective and thus, able to save large amount of the public fund. However, as this concept was also subjected to few arguments against it, such as it not being able to cater certain types of user, there is also backup plan, support and effort made by the local authorities to minimise this. Moreover, the arguments that it threatens the social workers profession and the market balance are found to be ungrounded. Thus, the benefit of implementing personalisation in social care was found to overshadow the limitations as discus sed earlier.

Child Obesity

Nowadays, childhood obesity has become an epidemic in all over the world. This essay will consider the problem of obesity and outlline possible solutions. To begin with, in point of fact the reason of obesity are not difficult to understand. Firstly, people are eating more and more unhealthy food, namely fast-foods which contain a large percentage of calories. It is because children feel junk-foods are more appertizing than fresh foods cooked at home.Moreover, many parents become so busy that they do not have time to cook . Secondly, there are short of space for children to play . In addition, children nowadays have too many exercises to do at home so they so not have much time to play. This leads to watching TV and playing computer game a lot. Thirdly, fast-food industry has developed dramatically in many countries. In fact, there are more and more fast- food joint in everywhere.Furthermore, particular in Western cultures are often very high in fat. Obesity have many bad effects on society . First of all, overweight children can get many serious dieases such as heart disease, diabetes or even cancer. It can also leads to an increase of stress in school for fat children when they become object of cruel jokes, consequently, overweight children are always unconfident in themselves. As we have seen, there are number of ways to reduce obesity.One of the most effective method is that society ,school and family should take responsibility for educating about mental health of healthy life style for children so as to they have knowledge about the risk of obesity. In short, the main causes of childhood obesity is bad diet and less active. This leads to considerable damage about health in the long term. In my view, children should be encouraged to eat healthy foods and do exercise frequently.

Issues of new management and ownership - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 6 Words: 1697 Downloads: 8 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Management Essay Type Narrative essay Did you like this example? After the company merged with Mittal steel it is renamed as ArcelorMittal. Lakshmi Mittal the owner of Mittal steel became the Chairman of ArcelorMittal. The merger of Arcelor with Mittal steel made ArcelorMittal the worldwide leader in steel industry by increasing its bargaining power by the consumers and suppliers. The new management and board had brought new Mission, Vision and Goals. Its goal Is to provide the leadership that will transform tomorrows steel industry. Benchmarking Since the merger in 2006 AM leads in the steel industry not only economically but also in applying innovative processes in the production line such as ULCOS(Ultra Low CO2 Steelmaking) and PVD(Physical Vapor Deposition) for reducing CO2 produced from its units. It has developed lot of Research Developments units for the development of the technology and sophistication in steel production. It has been the leading steel industry till date since its merger in 2006. With the take over ArcelorMittal has increased its operations and production to a great extent and became the market leader gaining international reputation and demand. It has made use of the previous resources and the abundance of man power to gain advanced and robust output. Some of the strengths the company has gained since the changes are strong clients, high level of integration, sophisticated infrastructure and technology. The company has set a new vision of Sustainability, Quality and Leadership. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Issues of new management and ownership" essay for you Create order Social Perspective In the social perspective ArcelorMittal has given huge significance for the health and safety of its employees as most of them would be working in mines and blast furnaces. It created lot of environmental awareness through its campaigns and promotions. It created its own brand name in the global market in terms of its quality, products and services. It has gained clients appreciation and offered its production and services to some of the famous brands in the world such as Ford, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Citroen, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, John Deere, Caterpillar, Whirlpool Electrolux. It has expanded its distribution networks over the years The standards of the company were specifically looked into with the future needs of the customers and clients in mind. Employment Perspective ArcelorMittal extended its commitment beyond the bottom line, to include the people it invests in and the communities it supports. ArcelorMittal continually seeks to attract and nurture the best people to deliver superior solutions to its customers. Its workforce is its major strength which kept the company the leader in the market since its evolution. Accountability, Open communication, Empowerment and Continuous Improvement being its vision for its employees proved that its the best place to be and work. ArcelorMittal has 326,000 employees around the world. 57% of that (186,000) working in Europe and UK. The primary focus for Human Resources at ArcelorMittal going forward is talent management. Developing the skills of its employees is an integral part of the ArcelorMittals vision to be the most admired steel institution in the world. Enabling employees at all levels to contribute to the best of their ability is the duty of any good employer. It provides various development pro grammes for its employees like The Business Leaders Programme and Group Engineering Programme for the development of the existing workforce. These programmes combine several rounds of internal and external training with a continuous review process designed to identify and develop a long-term pool of talent. Its matchless access to market intelligence, leadership in technological advanced products, operational turnaround and improvement capabilities it provides evidence that it possess broadest and deepest knowledge pool. Financial Perspective Since the merger there were many rumours that the company would falter in its future. But ArcelorMittal has proved that those rumours were wrong with its robust financial stability, balance sheet and capital market scale for access to funds.Its Sales has increased immensely last year which were not that good compared to the previous years since the merger. Culture Change With the change in culture the company successfully managed its workforce and operations. It is really hard to align the new culture and strategies vision and mission to such a large organisation but the effective leadership and flow of communication it became possible to stay ahead in the race by transmitting the new values and culture to the whole segments of the company. Competition With the increase in demand for steel a lot of companies compete to stay in the market. This led to the competition from various aspects of production and innovation. In spite of high competition since the merger ArcelorMittal managed to stay firm with its innovation and quality in production. It created a brand value which led to a stable base and the foundation of Arcelor helped in achieving that stability. Recession The economic downturn early this year has led to the decline in demand for the steel. The company has not come across this situation before which is a complete new experience or phase where it has to cut lot of jobs and make its staff redundant. It had close to some of its production units and blast furnaces which led to a complete chaos. In this turbulent situation the substitutes tried to take over but with the strong loyalty of ArcelorMittals customers kept the company still going in spite of strong opposition by its employees during the recession and the process of redundancy. The strong systems, strategies, and structure of the organisation with effective management and leadership ArcelorMittal withstood all the hurdles that it came across and stayed stable in the market. During the turbulent times of recession ArcelorMittal made drastic changes in the structure of the company by downsizing the workforce and the production units. Thousands of workforces who have been mad e redundant rebelled against the company through strikes and lockouts. But it was inevitable for the company to take the decision of cutting jobs and restructuring to reduce costs. In spite of the chaos created by the economic downturn the company managed to bare the opposition by gradually retaining its best workforce as the economy recovered from the blow. It provided voluntary leaves for the employees till the economic situation gets better. Acelor being taken over by Indian management managed to stay as the number one in the steel industry in the UK and around the world. The CEO of ArcelorMittal charted as the richest man in the UK still. It shows how successful the company has become financially and robust in the quality of workforce and production. The foundation of the company being strong has become an advantage for ArcelorMittal to stay solid even though it has made changes in to structure and management. Change Change plays a prominent role in any organisation and how well it is dealing and managing the change. It is vital for any company to look deep into every aspect carefully and follow up when change happens. ArcelorMittal has exactly done the same by transforming its change to all its workforce by showing them the insight into future. It proved them the stability of the company by its every action and reaction. Motivation and commitment to its employees, customers and stakeholders are some of the major strengths ArcelorMittal has put forth to stabilize its grounds. With its excellent change management, succession planning, best practices, sophistication in technology, demand for the brand, restructuring, development of RD increasing employment opportunities for the best and skilled technical workforce and able to survive in the worst case scenarios since last five years ArcelorMittal has set an example for the upcoming and growing companies on how to manage change in culture, economy , structure and management. Most of the changes in ArcelorMittal being upgrading and renovating and adding advancement and betterment to its every segment of business became successful and market leader. Task 19.2.b Define quality audit systems/practice and how it will be implemented to manage and monitor qualityÂÂ  standards specified by the organisation and process operated Quality Audit Charles Albert Mills defines Quality Audit as a management tool used to evaluate confirm or verify activities related to quality. A properly conducted quality audit is a positive and constructive practice According to the International Standard Organisation(ISO 8402-1986) Quality Audit is a systematic and independent examination to determine whether quality activities and related results comply with the planned arrangements and whether these arrangements are implemented effectively and are suitable to achieve objectives A systematic and logical process of evaluating and reviewing the process, practices and activities related to the maintenance of quality is called as the Quality Audit systems practice. It is vital for any organisation to identify if it needs a quality system process or not based on its size and field of business. Unilever For a huge company like Unilever it is essential for it to have a quality audit systems practice as it is involved in manufacturing of consumer goods and products. Unilever continuously strives for sustainability and in the quality of their productions and operations. With the advancement in technology now their are a lot of software based quality audit systems in the market. Unilever is planning to use a similar software based quality audit system in place that will allow the company to quantify the progress. Although there are a lot of software enabled systems of audit practice every organisations quality generally follows certain methods. The following are some of them Quality Sample Quality audit review Quality Inspection Quality survey Quality scrutinies Unilever has got a audit committee which reviews it overall approach to its operations, risks, control, process, outcomes disclosures. It also has got external auditors who conduct a formal evaluation of t he effectiveness of the audit process. Unilever carefully looks into all the areas to ensure the quality standards such as review of accounting principles, review of the analysis obtained, business risks and positive assurance on operating controls and positive assurance on operating controls, corporate policies, review of business risks and safe guards. Monitoring and resolution of complaints, review of application of information and communication technology. A detailed and scrutinised analysis an error rectification and review is done periodically in a systematic and logical process is done at unilever which makes it unique in meeting the standards of its quality and operations.

Harriet Tubm The Moses Of Her People - 1538 Words

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People On a cold night in the middle of winter, a weary slave ran across the field to the woods. There he met Harriet Tubman, the conductor, and the rest of her sore-footed but hopeful passengers who were ready to start the long, treacherous journey to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman, later called â€Å"Moses†, was a runaway slave who came back to her people and helped over 300 of them gain freedom. Harriet Tubman was born in Maryland to her slave parents Harriet Green and Ben Ross in 1822. Her mother worked as a cook for the Brodess family and her father was a skilled woodsman who managed the timber work on the Thompson’s plantation (Harriet Tubman par. 2). Because her mother was so busy in the kitchen, Harriet cared for her younger siblings, till she reached the age of six. When she was six, Brodess hired her out to be a nurse maid to Miss Susan. She was told to watch the baby while it slept but when the baby woke up and cried she was whipped. Her next j ob was to work for a planter named James Cook. She was assigned to checking the musket traps, even after she contracted measles. Sadly, she got so ill she was sent back to Brodess were her mother nursed her back to health. When Harriet was 13 a slave tried to run away. The overseer threw a 2 pound metal weight at him but Harriet stood in the way. The weight hit her in the skull and caused her to be unconscious for days. Harriet never fully recovered and for the rest of her