Supporting Significant Life Event

Introduction In our life, there are events whose occurrences are unavoidable such as death. There are also other events which even though their occurrence is not a must, their affected the life of the affected person permanently e.g. marriages, divorces, loss of employments, disability among other. Research has shown that when such events strikes, they affects individuals’ health and wellbeing, however, negative impacts can be minimized or eliminated if support is offered to the affected individuals. In care organizations, such events may have severe impacts on the patients /residents given the facts their vulnerability due to their conditions. supports to patients and resident of care organization is thus very essential in helping the copes distress, pains, anxiety and confusion, etc resulting from such events. this essay explain how supports to residents and patients and their families is offered in a health and social care setting to enable ensure their health and wellbeing is not negatively affected by such events 1.1 Explain the impact of life event on individual life Significant life event is defined by Paykel (2001), as an event that happens to an individual whose impacts are permanent. According to Milovanov et al (2013), significant life refers to changes which after they happen, the life of the individual involved is changed completely. Example of significant life vent include death of love one, loss of employment, loss of body function among other By losing his mother, George is going under the experiences of significant. The bereavement may have some impacts on his physical, emotional, spiritual and social wellbeing. According to NHS direct (2008), bereavement always has impacts on individual health. It affects them physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually. A bereaved person may experiences changes in his physical body. According to NHS Direct (2008), bereavement can have physical impacts such as weakening of body muscles, difficulties in breathing, and difficulties in sleeping, loss of appetite. Also bereaved person may forget or have difficulties in maintaining their routine personal upkeeps task such as bathing, taking medication etc George may also experience emotional issue. According to NHS Direct (2008), when an individual loss loved one, shock, numbness and moment of disbelief are usually experiences. As time pass by, individual may become overly sensitive to interaction with other. They easily get agitated. Additionally, the may withdraw socially and may also loss interest in activities they enjoyed doing before. According to Barnados (2008), Sometime bereavement may lead the affected individual in questioning his faith or may even abandon his faith forever. Bereaved person get angry at God for failing to protect their loved. This may led to a moment of spiritual crisis 1.2 Analyze possible group response to significant life event affecting one of its members Coping with bereavement may sometime be hard for individual affected. However, if individual receive appropriate support, they may quickly get back to their feet and resume their normal day to day activities. Group response to bereaved person is the best way to offer such support. The group response may be from family members, social group, colleague and friends or even self-help group. In the case of George, the group response he received in the hospital was very vital in helping him recover from the loss of his mother. The group provided informational support which helped him understand bereavement very well since this was his first time to lose someone so close to him. Additionally, the group also helped George fulfil his mother wishes. This helps him fight the guilty he had for not being involved ion his mother life. According to NHS direct (2008), given the facts that self-help group such as the one joined in the hospital is made up of members with common problem, support is provided in a non-judgemental way and from individual with better experience. According to Breen and Connor (2011), family member is also another group response that has very positive effects on the life of bereaved individual. Family is the immediate sources of support in many cases to the bereaved person. They provide emotional supports, physical support and sometime informational supports especially if some have gone through the same experience before. On the other hand, friends and colleagues provide social support to the bereaved person .They help the bereaved person fight the feeling of being alone, loneliness and loss of interest in social activities. Colleague on the other hand especially those from the same faith may be very helpful to the bereaved individual especially when he experience a moment of spiritual crisis (Junker 2011, NHS Direct 2008). 1.3 Analyzes the impacts for other in health and social care when an individual experience significant life events When a life event strike an individual in health and social care setting , the impact are far reaching and they not only affects the individual involved directly but also other members of the care organization including doctors, nurses, social worker and other patients. The death of Mrs. Garry did not only affect his son George only but chances are it also affected those workers who provided care to her. According to a study by Ablett and Jones (2007) nurses also go through bereavement experiences when their patient died. Ablett and Jones (2007) argue that nurses also go through moment of shock, numbness, disbelief when their patient died. The death of their patients also does have healthy and wellbeing impacts just like that of bereaved person. It is therefore important that support is also extended to nurses and social care worker when their patient died. They should get leave from their work; get professional guidance and counseling and also well as other form of support. According to Dean, R. (1998), there is increased level of stress and staff of burnout especially when taking care of bereaved families. The study by Dean (1998), also found an increased level of occupation stress among nurse and social care worker whose patients has died or is about to die. There are high changes that the nurses who were responsible of providing care for Mrs. Garry did experience stress and burnout during and after the death of Mrs. Garry. It is therefore important that these staffs are also supported Bereavement in care home also does affect other residents. According to Laura (2003), when a resident die or is affected by a life events, other residents may also be indirectly affected by such events. They may feel the need to offer support; they may also feel sympathy for the affected individuals. 2.1evaluate the effectiveness of organization policies and procedures in supporting individual experiencing significant life event and their social networks To ensure supports is provided in the right manner, the clinical group commission develops policies and procedures for organizations that offer bereavement care services. The core aim of these policies is to ensures bereaved individuals get quality care, have their confidentiality, privacy and dignity observed, proper communication used and equality and diversity taken into account. In additional to policies and procedures developed by Clinical care commission, there are also other guideline, policies and procedures that help care organizations to offer quality of services. For, instances the NICE bereavement guidance 2004, provides step by step guideline for assessing and designing support and implementing care to support bereaved individuals. If this guidance was well utilized by the hospital where Mrs. Garry died, the support needs for her son George would have been well assessed and fulfilled by the nurses in the hospital. “When a patients die” –guideline by the department of health, provide care organization with advices on how to handle death of patients. This guidance, provide a procedure on how patients death should be handles, how communication should be done with the family members and the procedure of release the corpse for burial as well as met the care needs of the bereaved. The guidance also requires care to be provided to the bereaved individuals in a respectful manner, based on careful assessment of the care needs (DH 2005). Generally, the effectiveness of organization policies and procedures for offering supports to bereaved person should is based on careful analysis of the care needs, and should obey all the principles of care including privacy, preferences, confidentiality, autonomous and quality of care 2.2 explain how others in the social network may provide support to individual experiencing significant life events When an individual is affected by life event, their social networks provide very vital support. When the Mrs. Garry died, her social networks were very instrumental in helping His son George copes with the loss. According to Breen and Connor (2011), Social network provide affected individuals with social support, physical support, emotional support and some with spiritual support Social networks are the rich sources of social support for bereaved persons. According to Junker (2011), social support refer to verbal and non-verbal communication between the affected individual and member of social network that reduces uncertainties surrounding the life event which help enhances personal control of experience in their life. During bereavements, the affected individual needs a lot of social supports to help cope with their loss. Social networks provides social support to the bereaved persons in a number of ways includes being around them, listening to their feeling, provide companionship and emotional attachments and many more (Breen and Connor 2011). According to Breen and Connor (2011), the presences of member of social group during significant live event help eliminate feeling of loneliness and make the affected individual feel cared for. Furthermore, members of social network enable the bereaved person to express their feeling about the death of their loves, something that help them recover quickly. According to Breen and Connor (2011), bereaved individuals recover quickly from their loss, when they have a people around them to listen to them as they express their feeling about the circumstances surrounding the death of their loved one. In additional, social networks are good source of informational supports that help individuals understand bereavement enhancing their changes of natural and quick recovery. Individual who understand bereavement processes very well are in better position to cope well with the loss of their loved one (Junker 2011) According to Breen and Connor (2011), Member of social networks also provides financial and material support to the affected individual. Bereavement is associated with certain financial cost such as funeral arrangement costs, cost to pay for bills, cost of adapting to new life without the dead person etc. this may increases worries for the bereaved person. Social network eliminate such worry to the affected person as it provide material and financial support which give caution to the bereaved individuals. 2.3Evaluate the suitability of external sources of support for bereaved individual The period of grieving and bereavement fades away after sometime. But in some cases the bereaved individual may be unable to cope with loss. This condition is referred as complicated grieving. This conditions call for professional and external source supports otherwise it might have long-term severe consequences on individual health and wellbeing. Based on the nature and characteristic of the conditions, an individual should be connected to the relevant external sources of support. There are also a number of external supports that is available for bereaved person with difficulties coping with the loss. The suitability of these sources depends with the characteristic and nature of the complication and it is therefore important a holistic approach is uses to assess. A holistic approach is one that looks at individual physical, emotional, spiritual, mental and social wellbeing (Relf, et al (2010) According Barnados (2008), sometimes bereaved persons blame their faith and God for not protecting their loved. Although this is normal, the crisis may be extremely extended and can have severe consequences on the individual spiritual wellbeing. Prolonged spiritual crisis can be resolved by connecting the affected individual with members, leader or their religion counselors. In our case scenario, although no case of complicated grieving was reports, psychologists and counselor could have help George who was mentally distressed by the facts that her mother was dying. There are other professional sources of support available for bereaved individual. According to NHS direct (2008), Bereaved individual may sometime loss their personal identity and personality. In such as case a physiotherapists can help bereaved individual with mental and behaviors issues to get their personal identity and personality back. In cases where the complicated grieving is having severe effects on individual physical health, physiotherapists can help the individual. Other sources of support that would have been helpful in George’s cases includes the cruse bereavement cares, bereavement counseling services, self-help group among other 3.1 Analyze possible organization response to support to support individual experiencing significant live event There are a number of ways in which organization can respond to life event that affects their members. In our case scenario, the organization George worked for responded by allowing him time off the duties to be with his mother and to mourn her death. Guidance and counseling is another appropriate way in which an organization can respond to life events. According to Barnados (2008), life event normally causes confusion, distress and anxiety on the affected individual and if proper support is lacking, depression and other mental related issues may be encountered. By having counseling and guidance program, an organization is able to help it workers cope quickly with the events. Having contact with external sources of support and facilitating for individual to accesses such supports is another effective ways in which organization can help it members. Some of the life vent that affect individual may be unique or the involved organization may lack appropriate skills and knowledge to offer support need for such event. In this case the organization can responds by maintaining contacts and enabling the affected individual access external supports. 3.2 reflect on own personal contributions to the support of individuals experiencing significant life events Friends and family members are the close source of support when and individual is affected by life events. Their supports are very essential and it helps the affected individuals feel cared for and appreciated. I have recently found myself in a situation that I was required to offer support to my cousins after losing their dad. Given the facts that the dead was a sudden one and also the facts that my two cousin was very close to their Dad, the death had really affected them to an extent their health and wellbeing was deteriorate. Being a student of health and social care management, I understood that bereavement can have severe impacts on individual health and well being if proper support was not given to them. I had to ensure them their physical and emotional wellbeing was meant. I did ensure they took their meals in the recommended interval, had their laundry and room cleaned and ensured they did not spend too much time alone. By doing so, I saw an improvement to their wellbeing. For instance, one of them who previously was so quit and withdraw socially, started to be socially actives. This helped him eliminate sadness in his life. During this time, I learned few things that have helped me to be a better health and social care workers. One lesson I learnt is the importance of being socially engaged during time of significant life events. The moments my cousins started being socially active again, the feeling and expression of sadness disappeared. I also learned that, bereavements can result to health and wellbeing issues, however if proper support is provided by family members or people around the affected person, the vents can have no negative or minimal impacts in individual life. This has helped me understand the significant of facilitating for family and friend support when an individual is affected by an event in my workplace. 3.3 make recommendation for improving support available in a care home for resident and their social network Care homes host individual with a lot of health and wellbeing issues. When such individual are affected by significant life event they may find it hard to cope with such event given their vulnerability. It is therefore important that care home have proper support for such individuals and their social group. To improve supports available for significant life events several things can be done. This includes recruiting and retraining for better skills, policy and procedure for assessing and responding to care needs arising from significant events and establishing contacts with specialist care services To offers appropriate and competent supports, the worker offering such support should be knowledgeable and skillful. Care home should hire competent individual capable of offering professional support or the staffs should be trained on the basics of offering excellent support. According to Guldin (2012), Delivery of excellent quality care services is dependants on the skills and knowledge of the person offering such supports. Having the rights policies and procedures of assessing the care needs arising from significant life events can help care home improve the support they offer to their residents. Policies and procedure eliminate confusion and provide a proper guide on employees on what to do in face of a certain situation. It is important that the policy and procedure developed provide a guide to holistic assessment of the needs. The physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social health should be assessed (NCPC 2014). Some significant life events may requires specialist services that care home may not be in a position to offers. For instance, complicated grieving may requires the specialist cruse services, physiologists, psychologists’ etc. care home should therefore establish contacts with external specialist services to make it easier for the patient to access such services when the needs arise. Conclusion This essay has shows that significant life events can have negative effects on individual health and wellbeing. It not only affects their physical health but also their mental, social, spiritual, and emotional health and wellbeing. However, the supports of friends, families, colleagues or professional can help them cope with the events without having much impact on their health and wellbeing. Friends, family colleague and professional carer provided different type of care including emotional, spiritual, material, physical and social supports. Their contribution can therefore never be underrated an it is important that they are supported by care organization to enable them even offer better and more meaningful supports to residents and patients in care organizations. Organization also have greater role to play in offering support to individual affected by significant life. Their policies and procedures determine the level of cares patients and resident receives and it is therefore important that best practices are encouraged through policies and procedure