One of the K101 five principles of care practice is to support people in having a voice and being heard. Why is it important for a care worker to do this and how can they do so?

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Katherine Jones   K101 An Introduction to Health and Social Care    PI: B7902913   TMA03

Part A

One of the K101 five principles of care practice is to support people in having a voice and being heard. Why is it important for a care worker to do this and how can they do so?

Supporting people in having a voice and being heard is necessary in care work as, if the service user’s voice goes unheard, it can restrict their identity. For service users who have the capacity to make decisions and communicate them it is especially important, otherwise, it can lead to feelings of discrimination and powerlessness. By encouraging and supporting individuals to express their preferences enables them to gain a real understanding of who they are and how they wish to be known and, this plays a vital role in their day to day life. It is equally important when decisions need to be made regarding their care and support.  

In this essay I will discuss the importance of the role of the care worker in supporting individuals to have a voice and be heard using the life story work of Suzanne McGladdery (OU, block 2, unit 5, p.21 resources) to demonstrate how this can be achieved. I will illustrate this using the life story of one of her clients, Jordan Morgan (OU K101, unit 2, p.19), who needed support in helping return him to the family he had been separated from. He needed help to get information about people he had lived with and support to enable him to accept his past and move on to the future.

Life stories can be used in various forms such as working on a book, video and/or audio and can be started when the adult and child have developed sufficient confidence and trust in each other. Numerous people can be involved, for example, foster carers and associates; social workers; education workers; support workers; birth parents; other family members and; most importantly, the child itself. Life stories provide an opportunity to show children why they should be proud of themselves and assist them in developing a positive attitude. This can be especially difficult as they often find it hard for them to talk about the past. Often children like Jordan feel worthless and neglected and feel they have brought it upon themselves so they need help to find out what happened in the past so they can move forward as finding their identity is one major challenge in their life before moving to a new family home.

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Prior to working with Jordan, Suzanne met with everyone involved with him to find out the reason behind Jordan’s referral. It turned out it was due to his foster carer needing an operation after breaking her hip so she was unable to care for him. Suzanne then decided to help Jordan compile a life story book which contained information on his birth family and information about his background and history. This helped him to understand why he lives in foster care, where he came from and gave him his own identity.

Jordan currently lives with his foster ...

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The first portion of this essay re life story work was good on the whole. A relevant example of it being used in practice is supplied and there is a description of the benefit to the service user. However I did not note a definition of life story work, nor a strong sense of how the service user benefited from it. I would have liked to have heard their voice more - apart from enjoying it, what else did they say about engaging in it? Part 2 was very confusing to read as the grammar was poor and there was no punctuation. Perhaps these were notes?