Equality,_Diversity_and_Rights

Equality, Diversity and Rights Equality is about fairness and ensuring all individuals have the same value and rights regardless of their background or who they are. In the health and social care settings, equity is about ensuring that all individuals have equal opportunities to have an open access to health services allowing every service user to receive treatment on the basis of their needs. It is important that health services such as in hospitals and care homes practice and promote equality. This ensures certain patients or service users are not favoured, therefore denying others of their legal rights. If equality is not practiced, it may lead to poor quality treatment or at worst being limited or denied access to services. For example, if someone was refused entry to a care home or hospital primarily because of their race, this would be in breach of Race Relations Act 1976. Equality is also required to ensure that everyone receives equal benefit from the service in relation to his or her individual needs. On the other hand, equality is not simply for the benefit of clients in a health setting, it also must be practiced regarding employment. For example, it is wrong to not offer a nurse’s position to someone who is capable of the job because he/she has a physical impairment. This would be in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and 1997. Another example is that they must ensure everyone is paid the same without discrimination against sex or any other minority. For an instance, in a hospital, female nurses get paid less than male nurses. This would be actively promoting inequality. Any society that ensures its people has equal chances and equal treatment, is building for its future by encouraging equality of opportunities for all. Diversity is used to describe the differences between all individuals. This includes differences in gender, race, age, culture, religion, social class, child-rearing practices, appearance, employment status or sexuality. It is very important to acknowledge these differences. In any care setting, people’s differences should be respected and valued. It is important to educate, especially the young ones, about diversity so that from an early age, they would know how to respect others regardless of their race, religion, gender, etc. and teach that neither is superior nor inferior. This positive role model encourages the children in later life to value a multicultural, multilingual and multiracial society. This will help ethnic minorities to be accepted more and integrated into a better society. A nursery or playgroup should reflect that the service is provided for all social groups within its service users (children) and workforce (teachers). It is illegal to discriminate against minority groups by not allowing every child access (1989 Children’s Act). For example, a school refuses a child entry because of his skin colour. This can lead to him being deprived of education and restricting him from reaching his full potential. So a diverse community is important to allow every child to do this. There are the two main reasons why we need to respect the diversity of other individuals: First, it is not fair and can be illegal to treat people from different minority groups differently or in a discriminatory way. Second, it is important to know and accept that there are positive benefits to society when diversity is respected. If we value diversity, it can open our minds to new and exciting experiences and also to new ways of thinking which can make our lives interesting. Society helps us to respect diversity because by not caring for minority groups we will miss their valuable culture. Rights are what we are entitled to as members of society. Our society recognizes that rights often come with responsibilities. For example, we have a right to live in peace, but a corresponding responsibility to be peaceful ourselves. These rights are sometimes called “moral rights” and are based on ideas about what is right or wrong, fair or unfair and just or unjust. These rights should be applied in all health and social care settings. All human beings have certain rights and it is extremely important that services respect these rights. People have three main rights, these are; basic human rights, rights provided by legislation and rights provided under charters, guidelines and policies. There are responsibilities in care settings to interpret the different rights and guarantee all employees and clients to have them. The patients’ charter helps ensure that all service users have a say in and give consent to any treatment they may receive. For example, if a doctor went ahead with an operation the patient did not authorized, it would be in breach of the patients’ charter. There are many other rights that clients and care workers have but the main ones are important to ensure everyone gets a good standard of treatment, everyone are treated as individuals, confidential information is not disclosed without permission and care is received on the basis of the clients clinical needs. Relevant in all care settings is the right to complain. This means that if a person feels that they are being unfairly or wrongly treated they have the right to complain and for the complaint to be thoroughly investigated. Benefits of Diversity to Society We now live in a multicultural society. This means that we live in a society with many different people of different religions and cultures. We are very fortunate to be able to take part in a society where we can learn about many ways of living from other people.   Education: It’s very important that equality and diversity is respected in educational aspects. The educational system insures that everyone has an opportunity to succeed no matter what background they’re from. The education has benefited from the cultural diversity in a lot of different ways like the lessons studied in colleges and schools now include cultures and religions of different groups of the population and also the wide range of foreign languages. Individuals now have opportunities of succeeding and aiming for their careers. Language: The English language is formed a mix of other languages from French to Latin etc. As people come to London, they bring their elements of their language with them and these elemental words are now used in everyday speeches. Other individuals bring additional benefits like they have an opportunity to live and work with people from different countries and they also have a chance to learn something new. Colleges and schools now teach foreign languages so that the people have opportunities to work abroad. Arts: We have a one good benefit of living in a multicultural society and it is because we have an easy access to a range of different traditions and art from different countries all over the world. Museums and galleries now display the heritage and beliefs of many different societies. Cinemas and theatres give us an opportunity to gain access into other cultures and languages. Health and social care professionals help us understand what people from different background need that’s different from us. Food: The other positive view of living in a diverse multicultural society is the type of variety of food that is available. This is a really positive thing for health and social care workers as they provide dietary needs for individuals. It’s important to know that a lot of people now prefer different types of foods from different backgrounds, although many elderly people still prefer to eat English traditional food. Our food choices have developed from an early age as we liked to sense different types of food. Cultural enrichment: The benefits that we already have explored like different types of food, religions, culture and languages are available and legal to be accessed by every individual that will mean that we will become culturally enriched. Culture nowadays is actually developed more into every society as different people from different countries bring their cultural elements with them into our society. Tolerance:  In a society, we don’t have to be friends with everyone. But we still have to behave in a courteous and respectful manner. The health care professionals should be able to talk with dignity and in a caring way to the service users and to their colleagues as well. This will get their cooperation. Even though we don’t hold the same values, beliefs and traditions, we should be able to learn to accept, respect and understand theirs to avoid conflicts and promote healthier society. Economic benefits of diversity: The economic benefits of diversity can be seen by everyone through the work that has been made to the society at different levels by the people living there and working in their community. Links are made to other countries like import, and export and the economy can be passed from one country to another all over the world.   Employment: Organizations employing a diverse workforce can supply a greater variety of solutions to problems in service, sourcing, and allocation of resources. Employees from diverse backgrounds bring individual talents and experiences in suggesting ideas that are flexible in adapting to patients demands. Expertise: Doctors and nurses from different backgrounds bring us to how diversity enriches our health services with new levels of knowledge. Lots of medications that we are using originated and where developed from other countries. New treatments are being introduced still with the help of experts from other countries. No one country is self-sufficient. Every nation relies from one another.