Explain how person-centred values should influence all aspects of social care work

Treat everyone as an individual with respect. Support them to make their choices and respect their choices and privacy. Promote equality and diversity and support their independence. Support establishing individual’s rights. Involve individuals in assessing, planning, developing and implementing their care and support needs. Involve individuals, their families, advocates and GPs in any decision making process.

Example: Treat everyone as an individual. Address individual in their preferred name. Ask permission before carry out any task for them. Close the door when personal care is being provided. Provide them with various options so that they can make informed choices. Support them to make choices if they are unable to make so. Include and support them to any decision making process.

By Md Foisal Miah Talukdar

Describe the components of a personal development plan

Target/Goal: Target is an aim of your career life. It is like what you would like to become in the future. Where would you like to reach as part of career or professional development?

Strength: Strength is your current capabilities and understandings about the profession. It also expresses your curiosity to explore wider area of this profession.

Feedback: Feedback is a way to know what others think about your current practice. It helps to identify areas you need to improve knowledge and skills.

Development Needs: It is about training and qualifications, you need to accomplish in order to reach your ambition. You also need to identify areas need improvement of your current practice.

Action Plan: Action plan is to determine the way you are going to achieve these qualifications and trainings (such as enrolling for NVQ in Health and Social Care level 3 with XYZ Academy, completing first aid training from ABC network).

Milestone or Timeline: It is about to set up a time frame for each training and qualifications you have to achieve. It will help you to be more dedicated towards your learning and development.

Review: Review is required to measure up whether action plans are effective or not. It helps to find out whether you have accomplished training and qualifications according to timeframe, or you have to set up a new timeframe.

By Md Foisal Miah Talukdar

Explain the importance of using feedback in improving own practice

We all want recognition of our good job which helps to earn a good reputation for ourselves and the organisation we work for. Good reputation is only possible if we receive positive feedback on our service. If we receive negative feedback, then we should be working on areas to improve which are not meeting service expectations or standard. Therefore, feedbacks either positive or negative are both very important to improve our own practices. Negative feedback informs us which areas of service we need to improve and positive feedback informs us which practices are doing very well.

You can use feedback to identify your learning and development needs to improve your practices. If you receive negative feedback, then you should work on areas need to improve your practices, and adhere to learning new skills in order to provide best quality of service.

By Md Foisal Miah Talukdar

Explain how standards inform reflective practice in adult social care

To work accordance with codes of practice and conduct a social care worker must:

• Protect the rights and promote the interests of service users and carers
• Delivery of care must be person centred
• Be accountable for the quality of their work and take responsibility for maintaining and improving their knowledge and skills

All of the above standards can only be maintained if we reflect on our practice and adhere to improve our knowledge and skills. In order to promote service users interests, we have to find out service users best interests at first. Not every service user we may come across is capable to express their interest or chose what best for them. For this reason, we require to find out the best interest for every individual service user, by implementing various practices and evaluating each practice.

In order to deliver care according to person centred, we have to take into account individuality of every service user. Every individual is different and so should be our approaches and practices, to deliver services effectively. In order to provide service according to unique individuality of every service user, we have to reflect on our practice to find out best practices for each individual. 

When we will reflect on our practices, we have to evaluate our own performance to find out areas we need improving our knowledge and skills. Without evaluating our performance we will not be able to identify needs for improving knowledge and skills. It is very important to have our knowledge and skills up to date for gaining public trust in health and social care sector.

By Md Foisal Miah Talukdar

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.

By Md Foisal Miah Talukdar

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

By Md Foisal Miah Talukdar

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.

By Md Foisal Miah Talukdar