.D2__Justify_Ways_of_Overcoming_the_Difficulties_That_May_Arise_When_Implementing_Anti-Discriminatory_Practice_in_Health

D2: Justify Ways Of Overcoming The Difficulties That May Arise When Implementing Anti-Discriminatory Practice In Health And Social Care Settings. Promoting Equality Anti-discriminatory practice is promoted by treating all the children fairly, regardless of their race, gender, religion or way of living. It is important that children are not treated the same, but they are treated with dignity and respect. For example in a nursery, if you had one child who can feed themselves you would give them their lunch and they could carry on and eat themselves. But if another child could not feed themselves then you would help them to eat their lunch. So you are treating these two people differently, but giving them both the opportunity to have lunch. Also, if somebody else was vegetarian, then you would provide them with a vegetarian lunch. So you are treating them differently too, but giving them the same opportunity. But it's also giving them respect and dignity. It would be disrespectful, bad practice and discriminatory to put a lunch in front of somebody who couldn't feed themselves and just leave them like that, and same for giving a vegetarian a lunch that contained meat. One problem that can occur when treating the children equally is that if a child needs special attention, then by including that child, and helping them, it is then excluding the other children, and they may not get the attention they might need. This can be overcome by all members of staff being diverse in their actions and making sure that every child is treated as an individual. This is from the Every Child Matters Guidelines. Another problem that could happen in a care home is if a resident is not very friendly, and a staff member do not get along with them, so they do not help them as much as they do the other residents. This is a way that promoting equality can be difficult, but to ensure that it is, the staff need to be trained to deal with stressful purposes, even when a resident is being awkward, as the residents have equal rights and opportunities. Challenging discrimination shows that, people are not discriminating against those whose behaviour, views and attitudes are discriminatory. Challenging discrimination can be overcome by challenging the attitude, view or behaviour, of the individuals as well as training and encouragement training should be of a good standard and staff encouraged and praised in order to promote good team morale which would also promote better practice and reduce discrimination. More to that it is important for care workers to be respectful and assertive when challenging someone as well as being open-minded and not make assumptions. Staff should attend regular staff training sessions and have team meetings between them and the management and also help to challenge discriminatory practices by being aware of the individual needs as well as those of service users. This can be done by promoting autonomy of care, being flexible, keeping service users informed and by putting the service user at the centre of focus. Catering For Individual Dietary Needs Another way of promoting anti-discriminatory practice is by catering for individual dietary needs. Nurseries provide snacks and a cooked lunch for all the children, but there might be children who have allergies, and may not be able to eat certain foods. There might also be children who cannot eat certain foods due to their religion. The Nursery has to promote healthy eating but they will have to take into consideration the religious needs of providing meat dishes for protein or for children who are vegetarian. They will have to look at other foods that will provide each child with a full balanced diet. Nurseries are now required to provide every member of staff with a full inventory of any child and their special dietary needs. One problem that can occur with this is that it can become very difficult cooking several different meals to cater for all the children with their different dietary needs. It can also become very costly having to buy different foods, and there can be a lot of wastage. To overcome this the nursery could cook foods, for example using quorn instead of meat, and give all the children this food to overcome the costing and wastage. The children will still be getting their source of protein, but several different meals will not have to be made. Also on some days, they could have vegetarian meals that don’t contain meat at all, as this would also cater for religious dietary requirement also. Promoting Independence and Opportunity It is also important that each child has equal opportunities. For example giving them all the chance to participate in all activities, trips, stories, role play etc. This means that when an activity is set up, the children have the choice to participate or not. It would be bad practice if you allowed certain children to join in, and not others, and not allowing the children to make their own choice about it. The children Act, says that children are paramount, the most important thing, and the nursery does not allow certain children to have the choice whether to join in or not, then they are going against this and are discriminating that child. The children are encouraged to play together with their friends, and are taught that 'everyone is their friend' there at the nursery and you should include them when playing, but what they decide to play with is their choice. One difficultly that can occur is too many children wanting to participate in a small activity, but this is easily overcome by having smaller groups and doing the activity several times to ensure that none of the children are excluded and feel that their opportunity and independence has been taken away. All activities should be non-stereotypical so that the children have an equal opportunity to play and each activity is fully inclusive regardless of their gender. An example of this is if a boy wanted to dress up in a fairy outfit, then this should be encouraged within the setting, as this ensures no prejudice. The problem could be that the parents need to be encouraged to not bring their prejudices into the group. Celebrating Religious Festivals It is important that a nursery provides different experiences for different religious festivals. This enables each child to participate and experience different cultures and their celebrations. Each experience should be in a fun and child-friendly way. Whilst they may not have in-depth information, the nursery can provide experiences of cultural harmony. They could by celebrating Chinese New Year by the children helping to make a dragon display and tasting various Chinese foods. Aswell as celebrating these festivals, it is important that the children experience different cultures and how other people in the world live, what they eat and the differences between us. This is promoted by reading stories from other cultures, making displays and tasting foods from different countries. There are always books from other cultures for the children to read if they choose to. One problem that can occur is if there is a child of a different religion, they will never feel fully a part of any of their own celebrations and they would not be able to share their knowledge or their parent’s knowledge with others. This can be overcome by asking parents their religion on the registration form and asking if any parents would like to share with the children information about their celebration. The playschool could also celebrate all the different festivals and celebrations, to ensure that all children feel included in their religious celebrations, and also the other children have the chance to learn about the different festivals and enjoy the different celebrations and the differences within them all. Confidentiality Information about the children should always be kept confidential and only the parents and certain members of staff of the said child should be able to access the information. Any personal information relating to the family, their needs or difficulties should be kept in a locked and secure place that cannot be accessed by others. It is important that the information is kept confidential because the nature of things like child protection plans and other professionals who may be working with the family may cause the family to withdraw their child from the setting. Confidentiality is one of the main policies as laid down by OFSTED and must be stuck to at all times. All information about the individual should be kept confidential and also certain people should be able to access that information, on a need to know basis. If the family of a child at the nursery have issues where social services are involved, and this information became public, it could cause distress to the family and the child may be treated differently. This can be overcome by the manager of the setting and they keyworker of the child being the only ones to access that information within the setting. You could limit the access and stop the gossip by keeping records in a secure place - do not leave them lying around in publicly accessible areas, for example a locked draw, or cabinet where only the people allowed to see it, can access it. Any information that is confidential should never be accessed by anyone who is not allowed to view it, and if staff go against this then disciplinary procedures should take place. Confidential information should also not be talked about within the building, for example if a child was abused and is now being fostered, then this should not be talked about between the staff. Only the people who should directly know this information should know about it and keep it to themselves, to avoid staff treating that child differently to the other children, and not being equal with the children. In a hospital situation is it important that the doctors do not use information contained in the medical records for purposes other than patient care unless consent has been obtained or the data anonymised. Training There are numerous government training schemes available to all members of staff where they can access a full or part bursary to enhance their knowledge of how to deal with anti-discriminatory practice. The training courses are there for any member of staff to access and are normally through a local college. It is important that the staff are fully trained and know how to deal with anti-discriminatory practice, as there be a case in the workplace that they may have to deal with, and they would need to know how to deal with it appropriately. One problem that can occur is that a child of a different culture may have had a medical process, for example circumcision on Jewish boys. The parents may not wish for this to be discussed or the fact made known around the nursery, so it is important that the staff know how to deal with these situations, to avoid any discrimination against that child. Also first aid training is vital when working with young children. Without this training staff would not know what to do if an accident happened, and could put the children in more danger than they need to be. Another difficulty that could arise is if new staff come in and do not know how to treat people equally or struggle to then they may be covertly discriminating against certain service users. To overcome this they could have equality and diversity training, to ensure that they do understand that it’s important that everyone has equal rights and opportunities and that the staff are more confident when dealing with different service users. Funding As the funds for settings is limited, they can promote themselves in the community by holding fundraising events such as a summer fayre, and the community know that any profits are going back into the setting for the welfare and education of the children. This exercise not only raises funds, but is a good way of letting the community know how inclusive the setting is. This is part of community co-hesion and encourages the parents, their children, their families and staff to show how by working together, they are being anti-discriminatory. One problem that could happen is that you do not have enough people to hold the event. To avoid this, notices can be given out, for example to parents at a nursery, and to family members at a care home, asking for their help to run a fundraising event, and to tell their friends and families to attend if they wish to, to get the maximum people to attend and help out. They could also make the event accessible and appealing to all ages, so that any age can come along.