Health_and_Social_Care

(P3) Describe the potential effects of discriminatory practice on those who use health or social care services. Marie is an 18 year old girl who lost the use of her legs when a tragic car accident left her paralysed. Marie is now permanently wheelchair bound and relies on the help of her mum at home. Sometimes the stress of being in a wheelchair gets Marie down because she can’t do the things that her friends are doing. Marie has restricted opportunities and this can sometimes trigger aggression, this often happens with her mum and Marie’s lashes out when she can not do things for herself. All people who have a physical disability should not find it difficult using health and social care services. All health and social care services should have the correct equipment such as; ramps and lifts etc to make it easier for people who have a disability to use the service and have treatment. If Marie had a hospital appointment and it was on the first floor of the hospital and the lift was broken, this would cause extreme problems for Marie. It would not be possible for the doctor to leave their station to go down and speak to Marie and Marie would not be able to get up to the first floor to see the doctor so this would result in Marie being let down by health and social care service and missing her appointment. As Marie would be able to see people using the stairs and walking about this could trigger her aggression as this (walking) is something that she can not do for herself. Marie has really low self-esteem because of her being in a wheelchair and this knock back would not help her confidence and could possibly make Marie withdraw from everyone around her including her mum who cares for her on a day to day basis. If lifts do become broken there should always be an alternative available for people who are unable to use the stairs. People may not realise that something as simple as using a set of stairs can have huge affects on the way a person feels and also how they interact with people after they have had a knock back such as this. The hospital should always make sure Marie’s appointments are on the ground floor, if possible, just in case the lifts have broken down and wheelchair users are unable to use them. Marie could be using social services to give her mum a break from looking after her, If the social worker failed to turn up to her home to look after her Marie would feel let down and restricted to just being in her house. This would also let her mum down as her mum would have to cancel any plans that she had made and she wouldn’t be getting any time to herself. Both Marie and her mum would need time apart from each other as they would start to argue a lot if they didn’t spend time apart as Marie’s mum is her permanent carer. If a social worker is unable to turn up to an appointment then someone else should be there to stand in and if not someone should have phoned Marie’s mum to make this known to them. If Marie had an appointment to help her exercise and the nurse/doctor was rude towards Marie when she couldn’t do certain things, this would be discrimination against Marie because she has a physical disability. Not only would this make Marie feel low about herself it would also affect the relationship with her mum as she tends to become aggressive with her mum when she cannot do things for herself. The health and social care staff should be encouraging Marie and not putting her down. If she isn’t particularly great at something they should just push her more and not point out her mistakes and praise her for every little thing she does. Marie should not feel let down by health and social care services and feel encouraged by them. All equipment should be in place by the services and ready for people who have disabilities to use them. Marie should feel she has support and not feel restricted to using certain services because they have the equipment in place. Health and social services should make sure their services are to an excellent standard and everyone who uses them are happy with their experience. Tom is a 35 year old gay man, who lives in a small community with his partner John. They have been together for 12 years, although they have found it difficult as many people who live in the community do not approve of their relationship. It really upsets Tom when people interfere or disapprove of his relationship with John. Many people stereotype Tom and his gay relationship, which has started to give Tom low self-esteem and the abuse from the community, does not help. If Tom was admitted into hospital certain staff members could discriminate against Tom by putting other patients favourably before him, even if he was there before them. Nurses may be rude with him when treating him because they may not be very fond of gay people/couples. This sort of treatment would restrict Tom to using certain health care service and could affect his opinion on health care professionals by putting all nurses in one category which would be fair. Although everyone is entitled to their own opinions, this should not be expressed when working in a professional environment, by the nurses treating Tom this way this is an infringement of Tom’s rights. Tom should be treated equally, he should be shown respect and should certainly not be treated differently because of him being a gay man. If Tom had to stay on the ward, the hospital staff could put him in a room on his own instead of letting him mix with other people on the ward. This would make Tom feel isolated and unwanted, he would feel alone and afraid and his human rights would have been taken from him. The health and social care services would have let Tom down by doing this. People on the ward may have requested for Tom to be put in a room away from the ward and in this case, this would be the patients discriminating against Tom for being gay. Tom has to deal with his community discriminating against him and his partner everyday and this would just be a further step back from them being accepted by people as a couple. Tom may feel aggression towards the hospital staff for making their judgment so obvious to other staff and patients, all the negative behaviours around him would not help Tom with any medical recovery and this could even result in Tom gaining further medical symptoms, which he would have to stay in hospital for a longer period of time.