Introduction

At some point in every human life, individuals encounter events that change their lives forever. These events are collectively known as significant life events (Falcon et al., 2009). Studies have shown that such events can have a profound impact on affected individuals, with most impacts negatively affecting their health and well-being. If left unmanaged or unsupported, individuals experiencing significant life events may face a significantly lower quality of life.

This paper examines the process and practice of offering support to people affected by life events in a health and social care setting. It uses the case scenario of Mrs. Garry, who was diagnosed with a terminal illness and eventually passed away, as a specific example. The paper focuses on the support offered to her bereaved son, George, during both her illness and after her death.

1.1 Explain the impact of life event on individual life

Significant life events are any events that have lasting impacts on an individual's life. According to Falcon et al. (2009), these are happenings that completely change someone's life. Examples include marriage, divorce, job loss, and the death of a loved one. These events can have both positive and negative impacts.

Some life events, like the loss of a loved one, will affect everyone at some point. Others, like marriage, are not necessary experienced by everyone. Bereavement, one of the most common life events, involves the loss of a loved one at some point in one's life. This process can be highly stressful and impact the bereaved individual in various ways, physically, socially, and psychologically.

Physical impacts: Bereaved individuals may experience several physical changes. According to AGE UK (2015), these can include sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, weakness, muscle tension, shortness of breath, and even digestive problems.

Psychological impacts: In some cases, bereavement can have psychological impacts like intense stress, depression, anxiety, and guilt about not doing enough for the deceased. In our case scenario, Mrs. Garry's death had psychological impacts on George. He became stressed, distressed, and even felt guilty for not spending more time with his mother.

Social impacts: Bereavement can also affect one's social life. AGE UK (2015) notes that bereaved individuals often feel alone, overly sensitive to social interactions, easily irritated, and uncomfortable in crowded places. They may withdraw from social life for some time. In the case scenario, the terminal illness and death of Mrs. Garry had social impacts on George. He took time off work to spend with his mother, temporarily neglecting his young family due to the anticipated loss.

1.2. Analyse possible group responses to significant life events that occur to one of its members.

One way to help bereaved individuals cope with their loss is through a group response. This involves individuals coming together to offer the necessary support and resources to the bereaved person. Family and friends often become the most effective form of group response for many bereaved individuals. According to FCA (2015), many grieving individuals find solace in sharing their experiences with loved ones. Therefore, it's crucial for family and friends to be present for the bereaved person.Marie Curie (2015) notes that family and friends are the first and most readily available source of support for bereaved individuals. They often find it easier to openly express their emotions surrounding the death to people they're familiar with, which ultimately helps them cope with the loss.

Another significant form of group response is grief support groups. These groups typically consist of bereaved individuals who use their experiences to help others navigate their own grief (Goodkin et al., 2001). In George's case, the support group for families in similar situations was instrumental in helping him understand the grieving process. Additionally, the professional palliative care team provided crucial support, allowing him to fulfill his mother's wishes despite their earlier estrangement, which ultimately helped him cope with her death.

1.3 Analyse the impact for others in health and social care when an individual experiences significant life events

The death of patients in health and social care setting, do have some impacts on the healthcare professional both in their work as well in their family life. Recent studies have shown that healthcare professional involved in treatment and care of a deceased person report high level of stress, anxiety and depression (HSE 2008). According to a study conducted in acute health care setting, nurses and staffs involved in caring for dying person experience disfranchised grieving (Wilson 2012). Disfranchised grieving is one that is not recognized and supported by anybody. This affects their job satisfaction and productivity. A staffs that experience disfranchised grieving perform poor in their work and social life. They feel sad, agitated and want to spend most of their time alone both at work and their home (Wilson 2012). According to Romesberg (2004), disfranchised grieving put healthcare professional at increased risk of burn out and compassionate fatigue.

 2.1 Evaluate the effectiveness of organisational policies and procedures in supporting individuals and their social networks affected by significant life events

Supporting person affected by significant life event should be done according to organization polices and procedure. In cases of bereavement, there are several policies and procedure developed to guide the care of bereaved and dying person. These policies includes end of care strategy (2008), when a patient dies (2005), bereavement care standard (2001) among other.

The end of care strategy (2008) was developed by the government to improve the care of dying person. According to department of health dying individual need to be treated as individual with respect and dignity. They also need to be free from any pain and their dying wishes should be met. The end of care strategy spelt out what care organization needs to do in order to improve the care for dying person. This strategy has improved the care of dying person as it gives them the power to choose where they want to live and die. One of the requirements of this policy is that adequate support of the bereaved family should be provided. Unfortunately, this was not the case in the George case scenario. The nurses were to busy to recognize the bereavement need of death before and after the death of Mrs Garry. If this policy was followed by the hospital staffs, George would have been given proper support when he was distressed and agitated by the facts that her mother was going to die.

Bereavement care standard (2001) was developed basically to improve the quality of care that bereaved individual received form hospital care home, nursing home and other care organizations. This policy has been very instrumental in ensuring all the bereavement services are of required standards. “When a patient dies” is NHS policy that guide care provider on how to develop bereavement services. It provided the basic guidelines that help NHS organization developed high quality bereavement services. According to this policy, all NHS are required to developed internal policy that must address bereavement pathway for expected and unexpected death (DH 2005). 

  2.2 Explain how others in the social network may provide support to individual experiencing significant life events

 In bereavement, Social networks refer to external links where an individual can access support. In case of Mrs Garry and George, other in social network may includes family, friends, nurse, doctors and even organization such as cruse bereavement care, Compassionate friend among other. Friend, family, nurses, doctors and other may provide wide range of support. These may includes

• Physical support- this refers to physical assistance such as helping individual do their daily function. In case of Mrs Garry and George, the physical support may include helping Mr Garry take her medication, meal and drinks among other.
• Material support- bereaved individual may require material support including food, money among other. In case of Mr Garry, her social networks help George raise £ 300 which was used to fulfil her wishes.
• Emotional support- bereaved person are also in needs of emotional support. Member of social group provide social support in number of ways including being physically around the bereaved person, listen to them, and keeping them engaged in meaningful conversation.

  The cruse bereavement care- this organization offers supports to individual who have lost someone close to them. In this organization, support is offered by the trained individual who comprises of counsellor and also by people who have gone through the same bereavement before. The services are offered either through face-to- face or through group support. Compassionate friend is a charitable organization for bereaved individual who have is their parent sibling or grandparent. This organization is made of previously bereaved individuals who offer support to other bereaved. Bothe Cruse bereavement care and compassionate relies on the experiences of previously bereaved individuals to offer supports to newly bereaved individual. These individual provide wide range of the support but mostly includes emotional supports and informational support that help people understand bereavement and cope with it.

2.3 Evaluate the suitability of external sources of support for those affected by significant life events

Bereavement is a fundamental of life as it affects every human being. The consequences of bereavement vary from one individual to another. To the high resilient individual, grief only last for few day or weeks after which it subsidies or disappear (Bonnano & Kaltman 2001). However, there is another group of individuals estimated to be 10-15 percent where the distress associated with bereavement is intense and persistent. This condition is known as complicated grief (DH 2012). Complicated grief may led to several physical and mental health issues such as insomnia, cardiac problem, suicide, cancer, hypertension, substance misuses, social impairment, work impairment and depression(DH 2012). Individual with complicated grief are well supported if they are referred to specialist services. Referring individual to specialist services help them deal with prevailing condition and minimise the health risks associated with their prolonged grieving. A bereaved person needs, to be referred to external support when; There are several specialist care services available for bereaved individual which include palliate care, counselling services, church and religion group among other. In case of George and her mother, there are several specialist services that are suitable to help them cope with the life before and after death. Palliate care service was the most required. Palliate care services was required to help affirm life to Mrs Garry and George and also to help them understand death as normal process of life. This would have reduced distress in both George and is mother.  

 

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3.1 Analyse possible organisational responses to the need to support individuals experiencing a significant life event

 Life event do have physical, psychological, and social impact on the person life. This affects the individual productivity in the work place. It is therefore important that organization provide proper support to it worker when affected by significant life event. There are several ways in which organization can respond to significant live event. One way is to that is to set up critical incidence response team. Some tragic event such as car accident, suicide and sudden death can trigger intense feeling of anxiety, confusion, and anger, guilty among the member of the organization or the affected person. This may led to even further, tragic event such as suicides, accident among other (BC 2015). To avoid, such scenario from happening organization always put in place critical incidence response. Critical incidences response team provide a lot of basic support to the affected individual including first aid, counselling, and mitigation risk caused by such event. According to BC (Pine Rest 2015), critical response time should always be available and their effectiveness is based on timing of their response. They should speed up their response as much as possible. The human resource manager also has significant role to play in offering support to individual affected by significant role. He should ensure there are proper policies in place to allow affected individual days off the work so that he can cope with the impact the event had on his life (Charles-Edwards 2001). In the case scenario, George need days off the work to cope with terminal illness and the death of her mother. Such leaves can only be grantee if the Human resource manager has enacted the appropriate policies and procedure.

3.2 Reflect on own personal contributions to the support of individuals experiencing significant life events

 The support given by other to individual affected by significant life event is of great importance in helping them adjust to new life. I have in several instances provided support to individual affected by significant life event. In one case, my close friend had lost her mother to breast cancer. This was really, a stressful time for her. She cried a lot, got stressed and worried. As his best friend, I had to be there for her. I made sure that I was physically presence to gave her comfort and allow her talk about her loss. I was very keen not to be judgment in all my conversation. This encouraged her to talk about the death and the circumstance that surrounded the death. The death of her mother stressed and worried her a lot. I was confused on how to help her overcome the stress and worry. After keenly listen to her, I discovered she was stressed with some many thing among them daily activities which she felt uninterested in. To reduce stress on her, I helped her with daily activities such as shopping and cooking. I also learned that she was very worried as she felt so vulnerable to breast cancer given that it was the main causes of her mother death. I talked to a local health community centre who arranged to educate her about breast cancer. After the counselling, she was relieved.

 3.3 Make recommendation for improving support available in a care home for resident and their social network

In this essay, it is evidence that people affected by significant life event requires a lot of support for them to adjust to new life. Inadequate support can have severe physical, social and psychological impact on their life.  Health care organizations should therefore make sure proper support is available to their patient/residents. To improve the support available in care home the follow recommendation need to be followed.

• Need assessment of the staffs- some of the significant life event do have effects on staffs. According to Wilson and Kirshbaum (2011), when patients die in the, nurses also goes through grieving process which affect their work and family life. Staffs also need to be supported to help them cope with such impacts so that they can continue to offer proper care to other.
• Staffs provide the basic and direct contact with individual who are affected by life event. Their skills and abilities thus determine the quality of services offered. Training the staffs to improve their skills and abilities can thus help improve the quality of care.

  Conclusion

 This essay aimed to explain how support if given to individual affected by significant life vent in health and soci9al care setting. Based on the finding of this easy the following can be concluded

• The negative consequences of bereavement can be severe and may negatively affect the life of the affected individual. Although some individual are able to cope with the impacts on significant life event on their own, the coping process is made easier and quicker through proper support from others. The most effective support is provided through group responses includes support provided by family and friends as well s that provided by support group.
• Organizations also play important role in offering support to affected individual. Through policies and procedure they provide a guide on how support is to b e provided to individual affected by significant life event.
• The essay has also revealed that in some case individual may requires special services to help them cope with life event. Referring them specialist services is thus of greater importance in supporting significant.

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