Why can it be difficult to find out information about the range of health and social care services available? What measures can be taken to reduce the barriers to accessing information?

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FROM: GERONIMO VINCENT MACANAYA                     

PERSONAL IDENTIFIER:  Y 8438422

TO: Prof. JAN WALMSLEY

SUBJECT: TMA 06 PART A

DATE:  13/05/08

Why can it be difficult to find out information about the range of health and social care services available?  What measures can be taken to reduce the barriers to accessing information?

Finding out information about the range of health and social care services available in the community can be difficult. The reason for this is when information about care services is provided; it often fails to reach the proposed crowd of people.  And even if the people are aware of these services, it may not be paid interest to because the problem is - the provided information is difficult to understand. The difficulty of getting the information in the first place; the ineffectual nature of written materials; badly designed information; and the attitudes of the service providers to diversity are some of the reasons why information about health and social care services could be difficult to find. In this essay, I am going to discuss the reasons why it is difficult to find out information about the range of health and social care services available and I am going to give illustrations based on the examples from the course materials and also discuss the measures that can be taken to reduce the barriers to accessing this information.

To find out information about health and social care services is difficult and considered not only for the service users but also to care providers (Unit 22 p.13).  Service users need to know information on what services are available to them; on the other hand, the service providers need information in order to function in their various professional capacities. The people want to know information concerning services for different reasons but it can be difficult finding out about what services might be suitable, whether or not is entitled to use such a service and where else to go if the particular service is not accessible.  Just like the case of Mandy and her son Sean (Unit 13 pp. 154-156) in one of the examples in Unit 13.  Mandy is a single parent looking after a sick child with severe asthma.  Mandy is new to the local area and doesn’t know anyone.  She needs help for their needs but doesn’t know where to go. Mandy has stumble on difficult time to find out what services she needed to know.  On the other hand, people she approached for help is not also much informed on what other services that the local community could offered to Sean and Mandy.  If only Mandy was able to get hold of information on services listed in Offprint 27 (Offprint 27, pp.119-110), their needs would be appropriately addressed to the corresponding agencies or social services.

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In retrospect to the example illustrated by the Jim and Marianne’s case in Unit 10, wherein Jim and Marian are being labelled as drug addicts, they are disadvantaged of their rights on accessing information for the care they needed in the community. As we could consider back in Unit 10, the GP’s are the “gatekeeper” to the NHS (Unit 10 p. 21). It is the GP who determines or contend with access whether a patient should need a specialist for treatment or not. Apart from being identified as drug addicts, Jim and Marianne have also concerns with regards to ...

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