UNIT 2: Equality, Diversity and Rights in Health and Social Care

UNIT 2: Equality,
Diversity and Rights in
Health and Social Care

INTRODUCTION
Equality is consider to be the most crucial factor which demanded by each and every
individual within the society in order to achieve basic human rights and being valued over the
diversity of people (Andersson and Kvist, 2015) This report focuses over these concept as these
are consider to be most essential part of health and social care service provider practices which
ensures better life of people that doesn't involve any kind of discrimination. This report includes
explanation regarding concept of equality, diversity and rights along with discrimination or its
potential impact over service users. It also involves detail about national initiative of anti
discriminatory practices and how it get promoted in health and social care setting.
TASK 1
P1.
Within health and social care practices it is crucial for the service providers to treat their
patients equally and provide better services without any kind of bias behaviour in terms of
religion, race, gender, age, ethnicity, language etc.
 Equality:- It means that everybody within the community being treated equally. In
several associations there should be certain laws and policies to ensure that each patient
must be treated equally (Einarsdottir 2015). Each person must get access to better care
services they need despite of any consideration to their lifestyle, ability or background.
Equality is a basic human right and health or social care services which meet their duties
in order to get respect, protection as well as promotion of human rights in order to
addressing inequalities.
 Diversity:- It refers to the process of encompassing acceptances and respect. Hence the
social care centres must focus towards maintaining workforce diversity so that patients
feel respected, treated with dignity and respect. There are patients and healthcare workers
with different characteristics and from different backgrounds such as race, class, religion,
gender and physical characteristics etc. that can't be used as a reason to treat patients
unfairly. Each individual needs to be valued as an individual and the patients should be
treated with dignity.
 Right:- It refers to basic human rights which belongs to every individual which embodies
key values within the society like fairness, self-respect, equality etc. They protects
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individuals from abuse, neglect and isolation. It refers to freedom that must be granted to
an individual so that they can do and say whatever they desire to happen. In several
health & social care institute patients must be provided with right to keep their view and
treated accordingly. The individuals should be treated with respect, equality and must not
be discriminated against privacy, dignity. In addition to this they must also be protected
from any kind of danger or harm, providing them a right to get information they require
and their treatment, right to be able to get interacted with their preferred methods of
treatment etc.
P2.
Discriminatory practices are set of action that are performed to discriminate people as per
difference in term of disability, ethnicity, age, colour, religion etc. These kind of activities have a
negative influence on people and which may hurt their feelings or even hurt them physically
(Guillaume 2017).This could also lead to many issues like marginalization, disempowerment,
lower self esteem and negative behaviour. In health and social care people usually face
discriminatory behaviour like :
 Overt and covert abuse : This type of abuse happens when service provider clearly
refuse to recruit or exert services to a particular individual based on race, caste, gender,
age etc. Whereas covert abuse is when excuses are made in providing health and social
care services.
 Bullying : Bullying at heath and social care units can be of three types verbal bullying is
one which includes activities like write or say bad things, social bullying means
embarrassing someone publicly and physical bullying means hitting and pushing the
person. It includes set of forces, threats or a kind of intimidation over a person for
dominating that particular person.
 Abuse : It is used to manage and getting power on the another person to control them and
make them vulnerable so that they are afraid of the abuser. Sexual, physical, emotional,
financial etc. are the ways of abusing a person at the health and social care centres which
means that they can be denied of the services provided by them (Hammell 2015).
 Prejudice : It means making a prejudged opinion and having a negative attitude towards
other people based on stereotype beliefs which can lead to discrimination as per the race,
caste, sex, religion, colour etc.
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TASK 2
P3.
Jamila has faced discrimination at several places to which she went to take certain kind of
services. This discrimination has potentially affected Jamila in wide-ranging ways as she done
with schooling, started job but doesn't be able to earn a better life to herself due to discrimination
she faced in each and every phase of life (Harris and White 2018). As a result of which she end
up with going to local housing authority, living in a damp run council, unemployed and living
over the benefit even when she is capable of earning things a better life to herself all because of
discrimination. The potential effect which Jamila has faced due to discrimination are explained
below:
Low self-esteem:- After experiencing so much issues and criticism within school,
workplace and in personal life, the self-esteem of Jamila get down. This is the reason she started
escaping from all sort of situation she get experienced with in her life and these all ristict her
from dealing with life challenges. As a result she left over every thing i.e. job, husband etc. and
moved to council flat to live their over benefits.
Marginality:- Jamila belongs to different culture, place, colour and background which is
the major reason behind she faced discrimination. As a result of which the major issue she faced
is marginality in which a margin is being set by other peoples in term of her access to
opportunities at workplace, services, restraining freedom of choice ad many more. This badly
affect her life and she end up with her job, family and went to live alone with her children.
TASK 3
P4.
Anti-discriminatory practices are the one in which someone perform particular set of
actions in order to prevent people from getting discriminated or experience any kind of such
behaviour (Kattari and Hasche 2016). But before preventing the discrimination it is essential for
one to firstly identify why people are different that makes them to get discriminated.
Discriminatory practices within health and social care usually includes discrimination against
someone's disability or it can be race, gender, disability and class to which a particular person
belongs. Despite of this the national initiative is consider under the sector of anti-discrimination
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activities and there are mainly three national initiatives that are named as convention,
regulations and legislations.
The conventions is refers to a kind of agreement between different states that try to
overcome particular set of problem which is like a treaty which is not much formal. In this, a
group of people or committee get formed which brings up certain guidelines or practices that
health and social care providers consider while providing services to people without presenting
any kind of negative behaviour related with discrimination.
A legislation is a kind of law which has been thought and considered collectively among
others which when passed once get applied to everyone and need to be followed by them
(McCann 2015). Under this, usually government pass certain kind of laws or regulation which
are being imposed over the institutions or organisations that are involve in this kind of practices.
These laws become mandatory to the institutes who provide such practices or services
Despite of this, a regulation is considered as a sort of rule that has been made and must be
maintained by the authorities such as NHS or council. In addition to this they are also
responsible to maintain this by controlling all the other type of health and social care service
provider institutes for ensuring that the user of service get fair treatment for which they
demanded in ethical manner or as per the guideline provided by authorities.
TASK 4
P5.
Nihal is a day care worker within a centre to treat the patients who is experiencing any
kind of sensory, physical and learning disability. He always tries to make its patients feel free
and independent as much possible so that they able to recover quickly (Ozturk and Tatli 2016).
These all are the practices to promote anti-discriminatory practices toward disabled people who
always face bias behaviour. Following are the practices performed by Nihal to promote anti-
discrimination,
 Nihal supported patients so that they present their needs and expectations by encouraging
them to choose as well as order food of their choice over lunch menu for feeding
themselves.
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 In addition to this, he also organised socialisation activities for patients by taking
permission from centre manager for starting an craft and art classes on every Wednesday
so that they feel light up while interacting with one another.
CONCLUSION
From the above mention information, it has been summarised that there are number of
people who experienced discrimination due to difference in term of their culture, background,
colour, racial etc. while taking service from health and service provider. These are required to be
minimised as it negatively affect people their health and mentality. Hence, for providing a better
life and value to service taker anti-discrimination practices must be promoted by implementing
conventions, legislation and regulation in health and social service provider organisations.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Andersson, K. and Kvist, E., 2015. The neoliberal turn and the marketization of care: The
transformation of eldercare in Sweden. European Journal of Women's Studies. 22(3).
pp.274-287.
Einarsdottir, and et. al., 2015. Democracy, caring and competence: Values perspectives in ECEC
curricula in the Nordic countries. International Journal of Early Years Education.
23(1). pp.97-114.
Guillaume, and et. al., 2017. Harnessing demographic differences in organizations: What
moderates the effects of workplace diversity?. Journal of Organizational
Behavior.38(2). pp.276-303.
Hammell, K. W., 2015. Quality of life, participation and occupational rights: A capabilities
perspective. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal 62(2). pp.78-85.
Harris, J. and White, V., 2018. A dictionary of social work and social care. Oxford University
Press.
Kattari, S. K. and Hasche, L., 2016. Differences across age groups in transgender and gender
non-conforming people’s experiences of health care discrimination, harassment, and
victimization. Journal of Aging and Health. 28(2). pp.285-306.
McCann, E., 2015. People who are transgender: mental health concerns. Journal of psychiatric
and mental health nursing. 22(1). pp.76-81.
Ozturk, M. B. and Tatli, A., 2016. Gender identity inclusion in the workplace: broadening
diversity management research and practice through the case of transgender employees
in the UK. The International Journal of Human Resource Management. 27(8). pp.781-
802.
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