Reference no: EM132824049

Supporting the Individual Journey through Integrated Health and Social Care

INTRODUCTION

Purpose and Aim

The integration of the Health and Social Care sub-sectors is important in terms of being able to provide services for the wellbeing of individuals, and to meet the increasing demands of a growing and ageing population with increasingly complex needs. Students working in health will need to be aware of integrated care pathways: a multidisciplinary approach towards anticipated care that enables an individual with identified needs to move progressively through their journey and experience positive outcomes.

The aim of this unit is to develop students' understanding of an individual's right to being involved in their own care and develop students' skills in promoting this right when working with individuals. This right is, in many cases, enshrined in law and in the fundamental standards of care. It is a critical element of person-centred care and leads to improved and often more cost-effective outcomes. Students will explore the importance of working relationships within multidisciplinary settings and the impact on the individual.

Students will investigate the importance of professionals being able to communicate and co-ordinate care with the individual and multidisciplinary teams for and on behalf the individual. In addition, students will recognise their own responsibilities in understanding seamless services that support the individual through their integrated pathway of care, considering personalised care plans - written with individuals for themselves, families and carers and with their wishes and preferences clearly identified and monitored. In this unit, students will be expected to research new models of care, funding availability, legislative frameworks and policy initiatives that contribute to high-quality person-centred care.

On completion of this unit, students will have expanded their knowledge and understanding of multidisciplinary working within health, care and support services. Students will have developed their transferable communication skills to improve care and better outcomes for individuals within their chosen role. This will also provide opportunities for them to consider future career pathways in health, care or support services.

Learning Outcome 1: Examine the health, care and support services available to an individual requiring multidisciplinary care.
Learning Outcome 2: Assess an individual's capacity to identify their own needs.
Learning Outcome 3: Describe the impact of own relationship with the individual and multidisciplinary teams involved in the delivery of the care pathway.
Learning Outcome 4: Demonstrate the need for person-centred communication in implementing person-centred plans.

Activity 1 (approximately 1250 words):

Case Scenario
You are a health and social care practitioner working in a care home situated in Redbridge borough of London. Most of your service users or clients are elderly persons suffering from multiple pathologies (such as osteoarthritis, cardiac disease, Alzheimer's disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, stroke, etc.). To work efficiently with such service users, specific healthcare and support services, individual's capacity to identify her/his needs, good leadership and teamwork, and effective communication are required. Your line manager needs to investigate how these requirements (meeting client's needs, good leadership and teamwork, and effective communication) are fulfilled at your workplace. Therefore, depending upon your work experience and your observation at your workplace as a health and social care practitioner (service provider), you are required to answer the following points:

EXAMINE THE HEALTH, CARE AND SUPPORT SERVICES AVAILABLE TO AN INDIVIDUAL REQUIRING MULTIDISCIPLINARY CARE.

To answer this task you should evaluate local resources (financial, human resources, equipment, technological aids, etc. available at your workplace and/or local borough as mentioned in the case scenario) and provision in terms of meeting the needs of an identified individual (e.g. an elderly service user or client) requiring multidisciplinary care. To support your evaluation, you should also outline local resources and provision that supports integrated care working and describe current local unmet need related to health, care and support service provision in own locale (the borough where your workplace is situated).While evaluating local resources and provision in terms of meeting the needs of an identified individual requiring multidisciplinary care, you should also explain the difference between healthcare (e.g. GPs, nurses, physiotherapists, etc.) and social care providers (health and social care practitioners) and types of interagency care provision in relation to meeting the needs of the individual requiring care (e.g. service users or clients).

Activity 2 (approximately 3750 words):
To answer the following tasks, you should focus on your health and social care related work experience:

ASSESS AN INDIVIDUAL'S CAPACITY TO IDENTIFY THEIR OWN NEEDS TO PROMOTE HOLISTIC PERSON-CENTRED CARE.
To justify your answers for this task, you should evaluate the differences in care assessments (evaluating and identifying care needs of the clients) across the integrated care pathway by explaining own (yourself) involvement in the different person-centred assessments (evaluating client's health) used to define an individual's care pathway. To support your evaluation you should describe the role of the health, care or support service practitioner (e.g. you) in supporting person-centred care and providing support to an individual in a health, care or support service setting towards the identification of their own care needs.

DESCRIBE THE IMPACT OF OWN RELATIONSHIP WITH THE INDIVIDUAL AND MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAMS INVOLVED IN THE DELIVERY OF THE CARE PATHWAY.
To answer this task, you should provide a detailed analysis of own personal growth and development in supporting an individual to access the quality integrated care they require to meet their needs, within parameters of own practice. You are also required to provide competent and autonomous (self-directed) leadership in information sharing within a multidisciplinary team in own setting (e.g. your workplace) towards meeting different individuals' care needs by describing the responsibilities of information sharing between multidisciplinary teams. You should also be providing appropriate leadership within the remit of own role (in your job) in a health, care or support service to promote effective interprofessional (e.g. partnership) and multidisciplinary team working.

DEMONSTRATE THE NEED FOR PERSON-CENTRED COMMUNICATION IN IMPLEMENTING PERSON-CENTRED PLANS.
To meet this task, evaluate own role and practice (your personal experience) in facilitating and empowering an individual (encouraging the service users) to communicate their changing care needs in health, care and support services. To evaluate effectively, you should also analyse own capacity (your capabilities, experience, and credentials) for positive and person-centred risk-taking when supporting an individual to maintain their own identity to meet their ongoing care needs. To support your evaluation and analysis, you should also demonstrate safe and clinically effective practice within own professional boundaries when communicating with different service users and staff in health, care or support services by applying appropriate communication strategies (e.g. communication methods may be used to cater specific needs of a service users) in identifying and responding to the needs of different service users in a health, care or support service. You should also describe different communication methods used to provide appropriate support to different individuals to meet and review their care needs.

Attachment:- Integrated Health and Social Care.rar