Contemporary Issues in Health and Social Care

Health and social care 1
CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
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City and State
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Health and social care 2
Introduction
Most elderly people experience various challenges such as frailty and general body weakness
which increases their vulnerability to falling and fractures. Another challenge is that majority of
them are living with various chronic and lifestyle disorders such as cancer due to prolonged
abuse of tobacco or alcohol, diabetes and heart problems among other challenges. This again
may cause other challenges to their health due to polypharmacy and other effects due to
prolonged use of drugs. In addition to all this, the elderly also face psychosocial challenges such
as memory loss and other mental health issues. For these problems it may be difficult for the
elderly to stay in their homes and most often, government and other private organizations create
specialized care homes that help accommodate and attend to these challenges that the elderly
people face. The greatest challenge however is that the elderly don’t readily accept this idea of
specialized care homes as they want to live their last days of life in their own ways (Løken,
Lundberg, and Riise, 2017). The government and the private sector is therefore forced to come
up with suitable strategies of providing a solution to this problem.
Mixed care provisions for the elderly and implications for service providers
There are varying needs of care among different populations. The age bracket therefore
influences the nature of services provided in the respective health care facilities all over the
country. The health care service providers not only target the sick but also the healthy to provide
health education and regular checkups in order to remain healthy and disease free. According to
Whitehouse, Jeyaretna, Wright, and Whitfield, 2016, most of the elderly health services include
end of life care, palliative care, dental health issues, mental health and psychological health
issues and counseling and heart related problems among others. The current care provision
services and strategies available to address the challenges of older people in the UK are the

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statutory, voluntary and the private sector. The statutory refers to those health services that are
organized and catered for by the government through the National Health Services (NHS). The
private refers to those services that are organized and operated as businesses to maximize profit
by the private sector. This comprises the bulk of most private hospitals and residential aged care
centers. The voluntary services on the other hand refers to NGO-funded and operated
organizations whose primary goal is focusing on the elderly people and the challenges facing the
elderly. Most of these organizations operate as charitable institutions and they are not profit
motivated. Apart from the statutory and voluntary care provisions, there are also informal care
provisions (Pacolet, Bouten, and Versieck, 2018). The informal care provisions refers to care
provided by groups in the society that also seek to help others such as churches, support groups
and family community based groups.
The bulk of statutory services are offered in the government funded hospitals and through
government ministries and organs. Government incentives and insurance services can also be
classified as part of the statutory care services. There are various implications for service
providers due to the different needs of elderly people based on the NHS framework. The NHS
framework is organized along various strategies such as improving health prevention, early
identification and early treatment of life threatening conditions. Provision of specialized support
and care towards healthy aging and living a healthy life. Identification of common health
problems, formulation and implementation of policies to help improve the health of the elderly
and also identification of people with risk of frailty and addressing the problem through guidance
on healthy living. In addition, NHS framework seeks to eliminate discrimination and other
barriers to access of health services among the older people. Some of the implications this has
despite differing health needs of elderly people is improved health care and healthy living for all,

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healthy aging and support for people with frailty, improvement in the ability to curb premature
mortality and improved quality of life for the older people (Batchelor, 2015).
Influence of the current issues in the care of elderly people
There are various current issues in the health of older people in the UK. These issues are
influenced by the health needs of older people, the condition of services, government policy and
legislation and the existing cultural effects on the nature of homes. Some of these issues that
affect the nature of service delivery among the older people in the UK include the life
expectancy and the disability free life expectancy, poverty and other social inequalities towards
receiving care among the population, increased hospital readmissions, financial constraints
towards accessing health and the growing population.
According to Greve, 2016, a rapidly increasing population without the rapid expansion of health
care facilities will definitely have a negative impact towards the health care. This is because,
there will be a strain towards the already overburdened health care facilities as they struggle to
accommodate the bulk of the population with diverse needs and concerns. Another bigger
challenge that can also be added to this is flexibility of workers. When the population grows
rapidly, in a bid to accommodate the health needs of the population, health care workers are
forced to change their schedules to accommodate the population. However, this may not work
well with all people. This being quite a big challenge saw the laying off of more than 300, 000
care providers which immensely increased the burden of the available care providers.
With regard to life expectancy and disability free life expectancy, it has been noted that there is
an increasing health gap for majority of the older people. Disability free life expectancy refers to
the number of years one can expect to live without a disability. In the UK, among people who are