Summative Assessment 501: An Evaluation of Elderly Care in the UK

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SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT 501- MIRELA

Table of Contents
Approaches to health: Social model................................................................................................3
Well being and wellness..................................................................................................................4
Barriers to healthy life style.............................................................................................................5
Service user engagement.................................................................................................................5
Social support and community networks.........................................................................................7
Sociological perspective..................................................................................................................7

Elderly care is a primitive need for a country and its inhabitants. These special need requirements
are important for senior citizens. It is also significant for global elderly care that comes under
unpaid market. Healthcare organisations in any country provide special attention for old people
of concerning nation. This thesis statement has evaluated a project named Forever Young for
providing both physical and mental support to old people for living a healthy life in UK. NHS
(National Healthcare Organisation), in UK that deals in healthcare issues in UK has been given
this responsibility. In order to accomplish this mission, NHS has focused on three important
segments of this task; Well-being, Health and Community. In order to maintain well being,
NHS has focused on providing them adequate care giving as well as mental support to become
self dependent. Different care-service providing organisations that perform under NHS monitor
healthy lifestyle of aged people. These organisations provide needs-based attention to the
geriatric community through various support networks.
Approaches to health: Social model
Approaches of health with reference to elderly care in UK provide emphasize on delivering
highest quality of care to senior citizen of their country. NHS and its subsidiary organisations
have chosen Holistic Approach of elderly Care to elderly people of UK as principle care giving
model. Holistic approach of care giving in UK depends upon Home Delivery of food and
medicine, Nutrition counselling of elderly people of UK, Caregiver counselling and Senior
Housing Apartments. The advantage of this model is that is enables care-giver to be responsible
for providing cultural as well as religious support to community based senior citizens.
Disadvantages can include in the contexts of time and budget exhaustion.
Home delivery of food and nutrition deals is an important approach of Holistic social care model
of elderly people of UK (Sweeney et al. 2016: 175-176). Organisations that are deals with
elderly social care, maintain effective communication with senior people as well as well as
medical and healthcare organisations. These organisations are accountable for providing healthy
food and medicines as per need of senior people. These organisations are being formulated and
monitored by NHS and NHS keeps record of supplied food and medicine. In this regard,
nutrition counselling of older people is important to maintain their health. It has been found in
research that many senior people in UK are suffering from diabetic and blood sugar issue.

Therefore, it is important for them to understand significance of healthy foods and avoid
unhealthy foods. Under supervision of NHS, concerning organisations arrange different
counselling programs to communicate with those senior people and make them understand
effectiveness and disadvantages of spicy along with healthy foods.
Caregiver counselling is another basis of providing social care to older people by NHS and its
subsidiary organisations (Thorneycroft et al. 2016: 280-281). These organisations instruct
caregivers to provide attention to those elderly people. However, caregivers are also instructed to
allow older adults to perform some of their tasks by their own. It is important for those adults to
get their confidence back to perform a job. It is also important to get their self confidence and
independence to perform any task. Another important feature that NHS and its subsidiary
organisations follow to maintain their Holistic Approach of elderly care to provide old age home
with medical facilities (Alsalesh et al. 2016: 75-76). This is important for old people to stay
under medical observance. It has been noted that due to getting older, a person loses his physical
strength as well as immunity power. Therefore, it is important for them to stay under medical
observation as well as medical aid accordingly. NHS maintains special team for elderly people
and their medical teams that are consisted to medical staffs with friendly attitude. It has been
noted that, older people like to get friendliness and share their thoughts. Therefore, medical staffs
of NHS as well as its subsidiary organisations get adequate training and counselling programs to
manage with elderly problems and maintain effective communication with elderly people.
Well being and wellness
Health emphasizes on more than maintaining good physical condition. It also depends on mental
and psychological observation of elderly people. According to this thesis statement, NHS, along
with its subsidiaries provides care to maintain well being and wellness of elderly people in UK.
In this regard, a survey has been conducted on UK elderly people between ages of 57 to 77. It
has been clearly pointed out that there are two important variables that are responsible for
maintaining wellbeing and wellness of senior citizens in UK; Physical care and Mental Health
(Clapton et al. 2017: 56-57). Physical care of elderly people lies on observation conducted by
NHS and its supporting organisations. In today’s scenario, competitiveness is an important
feature of job environment (Hollis et al. 2015: 263-264). Therefore, diabetic problems, high
blood pressure and strokes are relevant in this issue. Along with cancer, these physical problems

are also prolonged in nature. Organisations provide special attention on monitoring these
problems and take necessary actions to solve them.
On the other hand, mental health is also important for concerning elderly people that needs to
get observed. Psychological as well as mental well being and wellness emphasized on
depression, loneliness, stress and self esteem of older people. It has been mentioned in this
assessment thesis that these psychological factors make a severe impact on health issue of senior
citizens (Northcott et al. 2017: 360-361). It has also been mentioned that, many older people
contain habit of smoking and drinking that are not permissible for maintaining their health.
Withdrawal effect of these can cause a severe impact on both psychological and physical health
of those senior citizens. In order to meet these problems, NHS and its subsidiary organisation
conduct rehabilitation programs for getting rid off from those intoxications.
Barriers to healthy life style
Different barriers of healthy lifestyle of elderly people in UK have been evaluated. In order to
discuss barriers, five aspects have been noted in this thesis; Food habit, Memory loss,
Communication with career, Neuromotor impairment, Co morbidities and accidents such as falls
or sprain. Food habit is an important segment for evaluating health and care of senior people in
UK. Senior Citizens in UK have a tendency to have delicious foods that are not permissible to
their health. It is also important for concerning people to have light foods with minimum spice
that are easy to digest. As opined by Allen et al. (2016: 45-46) memory loss of senior people is
another important barrier for senior people. It is important for organisations to know about
present as well as past problems of those senior people to evaluate their physical and mental
problem. However, due to memory loss, senior people forget about their problems and cannot
make effective communication with their problems. Therefore it becomes hard to meet their
health as well as psychological factors of care.
Service user engagement
Neuromotor impairment is another significant barrier of maintaining healthy lifestyle. This
problems deals with neuron problems that affects physical movements of senior people/. This
problem occurs due to malfunction in nerves as well as reduction of strength in bone. In case of
effective social care, senior people in UK are needed to perform movement and keep

communication with organisations. As argued by Hassard et al. (2017: 34-35), in case of
neuromotor impairment, they are not able to communicate and move to organisations for
treatment. It has been noticed that organisations cannot conduct treatment of those people by
delivery medical tools. This problem is related to accidents such as fail or sprain by elder people.
It has been mentioned earlier that neuromotor impairment is responsible for lessen strength in
bones and muscles of senior citizens. Therefore, at the time of movement, any accident can be
happen to senior people by failing or spraining.
Service user involvement is important for maintaining care of elderly people in UK by NHS and
its subordinate organisations. It is important for organisations to get the feedback about their
healthcare measurements. This thesis statement has elaborated Elderly people as their service
users. In order to provide them service, organisations appoint caregivers who are responsible for
providing care to those senior citizens (Thornicroft et al. 2016: 276-277). It is important for
organisation to get feedback from elderly people to evaluate their satisfaction level. This level of
involvement is useful to evaluate care givers performance and training. During this research, it
has been found that many organisations arrange seminars and workshops to enhance effective
communication between caregiver and elderly people. Organisational operators of NHS and its
subsidiaries have found that satisfaction level of senior people depends on psychological as well
as mental factors. As an example, it has been mentioned that lack of communication between
elderly people and caregivers make an important aspect of this issue (Alsaleh et al. 2016: 71-72).
On the other hand, caregivers provide adequate physical help to them but sometimes it has been
witnessed that they are not providing adequate mental support to elderly people.
It has also been noticed in perspective of UK that many elderly people do not avail facility of
caregivers. They focused on self help and training to meet their own problems. It is important for
them to meet their basic need without depending on other and improving skills to perform tasks
of their own. This trend has been noticed in Scotland and Wales Island in UK. Older people of
these cultural notions follow independency for conducting any task. In case of family, older
people depend upon job sharing and teamwork (Claptoin et al. 2017: 56-57). In case of
performance in social activities, senior citizens of concerning cultural notion maintain teamwork
as well as thought sharing process.

Social support and community networks
Social support networks in health and social care organisation maintain networks with NHS and
Statutory body of government. It is also important for concerning organisation to get held and
backing from government institutions to perform their work. It is also important for concerning
organisations to maintain their demand and supply chain. It has been mentioned in this thesis
statement that organisation follows Holistic Approach of Elderly care which focuses on
delivering foods and medicines, counselling of caregivers as well as providing senior housing to
elderly citizens (Kenny et al. 2016: 442-443). In order to conduct this support network, it is
important for those organisations to maintain their care giving program to elderly people.
These social support networks make a significant value on community based programs on
elderly people. This community based working trend deals with financial as well as cultural
perspective. In case of financial notion, long term care giving by NHS and its subsidiary depends
upon charges that they levy on some services. In case of home delivery and caregivers for 24
hours in a day impose charges that are being circulated according to financial notion of area. On
the other hand, cultural aspect is also important for NHS and its subsidiary organisations to
maintain and conduct their social care operations.
Sociological perspective
In this thesis statement health care of elderly citizens in UK has been evaluated. This social care
of UK people has been taken and observed by NHS and other subsidiaries of concerning
organisation. There are different sociological perspectives in UK that play major impact on
health care of elderly people in UK. These perspectives are; social, legal and cultural variables.
Social aspects deal with financial base as well as lifetime performance. Lifetime performance of
elderly people deals with job and responsibilities that are being carried out by elderly people.
This trend makes a severe impact on lifestyle of senior citizen. On the other hand legal variables
deal with different regulations imposed by UK government on social care of senior citizens.
NHS and its subsidiary organisations deal with social care practices by following this legal
verdicts and regulations (Taylor et al. 2015: 327-328). Cultural aspect of social care deals with
religious as well as domestic mindset of UK people. It has been witnessed that people from
Scotland and Wales Island prefer to perform their task by own.

This thesis statement has evaluated social care of senior citizen of UK by National Health
Service and different organisations who perform their task as per instructions of NHS. In order to
evaluate them thesis statement has provided information about Holistic Approach of Elderly
care that has been formulated by NHS with giving special reference to caregivers. This study
also evaluates well beings of senior citizens, health care issues and factors based on community
in social care. Barriers of social care have been also discussed in this study.

Reference List
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Website
National Health Service (2019), NHS, About Us, Retrieved from < https://www.nhs.uk/about-
us/> Accessed on [26th February 2019]