Archive for the ‘Care Work’ Category
What Makes Good Care Work for Children with Complex Health and Social Care Needs
All children need to be able to live at home, go to school, spend time and participate in leisure and community activities with family and friends. The very similar needs also apply to children with complex health and social care needs (CHCN). In fulfilling every requirement of children with CHCN, their families should ensure flexibility and responsiveness to provide accommodating treats in family events, emergencies and preferences, including about where and when health needs should be met. Parents can experience benefits from a good relationship with practitioners specialized in complex care work for children.
However, the invisibility of social care work jobs has been identified as one of the obstacles of good practice in the care of children with CHCN. This condition causes a mismatch between the formal remit of providers and the actual services they provide. Consequently, workers’ formal roles are overly restrictive. To cope with this problem, planners, commissioners and managers need to ensure that staff roles are adequate to the remit of their work. They need to consider how services can be designated to enable maximum flexibility and responsiveness.
The commissioners could learn from service providers in order to improve practice. Short-term nature of funding arrangements is another barrier to good service. Families want services that can continue even when their child’s needs change. Thus, instead of having to keep changing the team or the service, most families prefer to choose companies that guarantee the continuity of service provision and familiarity with professionals.