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Thursday 14 September 2017

Describe potential conflicts or dilemmas that may arise between the duty of care and an individual’s rights

Balance between duty of care and individual’s right must be maintained professionally. If you cannot deal with dilemmas, you may always seek advice from your superiors (such as Manager, Team leader or senior carer).
Dilemmas or conflicts may arise between the duty of care and an individual rights in following ways -
·       An individual wants to go out himself to exercise his ‘freedom of movement rights’ when he has not got mental capacity to do so safely.
·       A distressed individual wants a carer to keep a secret about lending a big amount of money to his/her friend which is not returned in time.
·       An individual makes inappropriate comments, sometimes in public, under his ‘freedom of speech’ rights, which is not liked by others. But explaining him to prevent it makes him angry.
·       An individual wants to make choices about their own care that are not in their own best interests.

Describe how to respond to complaints

Responding to complaints is one of the organisational principle duties. It is also a legal framework for organisational operation. Complaints also inform us the requirement of service improvement, for the better service delivery in the future. The following steps can be taken in order to respond to a complaint:

  • Request to complain formally in written format if it is deemed necessary
  • Reply with acknowledgement of receipt of complaint
  • Request to complainant to have a formal meeting in person
  • Arrange a date for meeting at complainant’s convenience
  • Discuss the complete issue with complainant including how he or she felt and how it affected her. Discussion should be included what complainant wants or what outcome she expects to be happy with. Any proof or evidence can be collected on that day if complainant would like to add.
  • Reply to the complainant with a specific time frame within her complaint will be dealt with or the outcome will be known
  • Investigate the issue according to internal policies and procedures
  • Find out the suitable outcome  and inform the complainant within time frame
  • Send the decision letter to the complainant which must have appeal procedure explained against your decision

How the duty of care contributes to safeguarding individuals

Duty of care helps to maintain standard of care, in line with principles, policies and procedures and codes of practice. It informs us to work according to policies and procedures, codes of practice and national care standard, which is safeguarding individuals, enabling their choices and managing risks. Hence, we are legally obliged to safeguard individual from any kind of harm or abuse as part of duty of care.

It prevents us from delivering care practice that has negative impact on individual’s safety, health and wellbeing. It also restricts to perform any tasks we are not competent to do safely. By knowing duty of care, we will be able to recognise the obligation for action to take in order to protect individual from harm and abuse.

We have a duty of care to report any safeguarding or health and safety issue immediately to appropriate authority (such as Manager, Team Leader). If we do not report or take any action then we would cause harm to service users, ourselves and other team members.