Images of Inequality: Social Care User Exclusion in the UK (4SC002)

This essay examines the causes of inequality and social exclusion experienced by social care service users in the United Kingdom, particularly focusing on older individuals within residential care homes. It highlights factors such as age-based discrimination, lack of access to resources, family issues, and challenges faced by immigrants. The essay discusses potential solutions, including improving service quality, addressing age discrimination, promoting person-centered care, and joint commissioning between health and social care. It emphasizes the importance of treating older individuals with dignity, respecting their choices, and ensuring fair and equal treatment to overcome these inequalities. Desklib offers a wealth of study resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to aid students in their academic pursuits.

Running head: IMAGES IN INEQUALITY
Images in inequality
Name of student
Name of University
Author note

1IMAGES IN INEQUALITY
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Reasons for being disadvantaged and socially excluded.................................................................3
Ways by which it could be challenged............................................................................................5
Overcoming the inequality..............................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
The topic will illustrate about the major causes of inequality and the reasons for which a
particular social care service user group may be disadvantaged as well as socially excluded. The
service users are the patients, elderly individuals and other users of health and social care
services. The case study revolves around the social care service user groups who are often
socially excluded and even neglected within the social care homes that are mainly dedicated
towards caring for older people. The social care service user group is mainly aged between 50 to
100, which is considered as the registered care categories. It is a residential care home and is not
for profit owned, which has created convenience in serving the customers and create positive
impacts within the society by treating every individuals including elderly people and people who
need support equally.
Reasons for being disadvantaged and socially excluded
Often the social care service user groups within United Kingdom experience lack of
social care support, negligence by the staffs and even becoming dependent largely on the others.
The service user group is within the age group of 50 to 100 and thus most of the elderly
individuals have been the victims of social exclusion and socially disadvantageous. The social
care homes provide care services to older people and understand their needs and preferences to
keep them engaged altogether. The Care home staffs need to commit fully to the service users by
respecting their values, beliefs and maintaining dignity (Kluegel and Smith 2017). The more the
service user satisfaction, the better will be the chances of overcoming issues related to social
exclusion and becoming disadvantaged. Social exclusion represents a person’s ability to be

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engaged in social, economic, political and cultural life and about the way; they interact and
establish relationships with others. The elderly individuals often could be socially excluded and
being disadvantaged because of their high level of dependence on others to lead a proper life or
while performing a task. Other important factors associated with the social exclusion could be
the age, disability, gender, ethnicity, employment status, earnings or even the individuals who
have come to UK as immigrants (Durante et al. 2013).
Social exclusion is a multi-dimensional and complex process where lack of proper
resources and services were provided to individuals and even they may not have the ability to
engage in activities that are available to other people within the society. There are many elderly
people who could visit UK as immigrants for seeking the services of social care home and at
times, they may even be neglected, which can be a major form of discrimination based on race,
religion and ethnicity (Alesina, Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2014). Age based
discrimination is another cause of social exclusion and being disadvantaged. Various evidences
showed that the extent to which health and social care services are differentiated by age and
because of their age, they often face difficulties to avail the most suitable care services and
treatment. This is a form of discrimination under the Equality Bill and Government of UK must
make sure that each individual, regardless of their ages should be provided with the tight
treatment and social care services for their improvement in health and wellbeing (Alesina,
Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2016).
There are broader concepts related to the quality of life for the elderly people within the
social care homes such as retaining the independence and autonomy, proper control, making
choices on their own and making sure that the social care workers respect the decisions and

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priorities of the individuals. Often it is seen that while providing the social care services for
improving the health of individuals, they may not feel to have the proper medicines. They might
not also feel to obtain the right treatment procedures and in such cases, they could get neglected
and the services might be ignored by them as well (Bonilla-Silva 2017). The older individuals
who are considered as the social care service user groups in UK have faced inability to access the
relevant resources to communicate with the local networks, share and exchange information
properly. The entry into the residential care home often takes place because of family problems
and breaking down of the family relationships, which make the family members ignore and
neglect the elderly individuals. Within the residential care home also, the people face major
issues such as the transition from care to independence. The immigrants who come to stay at
United Kingdom also sometimes face issues regarding the discrimination and this create a
negative mindset among them about the country as well (Thaa 2016).
Ways by which it could be challenged
It could be challenged by making sure that the social care service users were provided
with good quality services to keep them satisfied and encouraged to live a healthy, longer and
independent life. While focusing on the older individuals within the social care home, few of
them are socially excluded more than the others. It can be due to the various factors like
unemployment, poor housing, lack of proper health and wellbeing, lack of skills and knowledge.
The national age discrimination review follows various principles, which shows that the
discrimination based on age and unfair treatment of old individuals within social care homes
shall not be included in the fair society (Cameron et al. 2014). The personalization enables
meeting the health needs of individuals within the social care and ensuring that the services are

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differentiable by age only when it is beneficial and objectively justifiable. The Labor
Government must support the entire process of development procedures that would conduct
researches and implement various strategies to improve the outcomes through support of older
people. Few of the activities include National Service Framework for the older people and the
Government strategies regarding the ageing and building a better society for the elderly age
groups (Dominelli 2017). National Service Framework for Long Term Conditions could
challenge the social exclusion and the socially disadvantaged individuals by setting a
Government vision for the services to meet the changing needs of individuals and fulfilling the
aspirations of people to gain better control over their lives. The Heath Prevention package
launched by the Government bodies could also managing assessment of needs within a
supportive environment and treat elderly individuals equally to prevent social exclusion (Choi
and Dinitto 2013).
Overcoming the inequality
Joint commissioning between the health and social care will create a vision for adult
social care of services that are person centered and effective for improving the lives of older
social care service users’ groups. This would also promote management of comprehensive health
and social care services for the older people as well as ensure preventing any forms of
discrimination within the social care residential home (Stephan, Sutin and Terracciano 2015).
The Equality Bill would enable treating the older individuals at the social care home without any
discrimination and ensuring that favorable services were provided to them for their health and
wellbeing. Educational objectives should include putting efforts for changing the thinking and
behaviors of the individuals and furthermore improve the social care for older people at the care

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home. This would overcome the challenges while promoting dignity of older people, furthermore
respect the older individuals admitted at the care home, respect their choices and decisions and
treat them fairly and equally as well (Carehome.co.uk 2018).
Conclusion
The report was prepared to discuss about the various aspects related to the social
exclusion of older individuals along with the reasons for which they were being socially
disadvantaged. The elderly individuals were often neglected and ignored by the staffs and their
choices and decisions had not been prioritised due to their higher level of dependence on others.
The various ways of overcoming the challenges and manage equality to ensure that the older
individuals were not discriminated had been included here too.

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References
Alesina, A., Michalopoulos, S. and Papaioannou, E., 2014. Ethnic inequality.
Alesina, A., Michalopoulos, S. and Papaioannou, E., 2016. Ethnic inequality. Journal of Political
Economy, 124(2), pp.428-488.
Bonilla-Silva, E., 2017. Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial
inequality in America. Rowman & Littlefield.
Cameron, A., Lart, R., Bostock, L. and Coomber, C., 2014. Factors that promote and hinder joint
and integrated working between health and social care services: a review of research literature.
Health & social care in the community, 22(3), pp.225-233.
Choi, N.G. and Dinitto, D.M., 2013. Internet use among older adults: association with health
needs, psychological capital, and social capital. Journal of medical Internet research, 15(5).
Dominelli, L., 2017. Anti-racist social work. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Durante, F., Fiske, S.T., Kervyn, N., Cuddy, A.J., Akande, A.D., Adetoun, B.E., Adewuyi, M.F.,
Tserere, M.M., Ramiah, A.A., Mastor, K.A. and Barlow, F.K., 2013. Nations' income inequality
predicts ambivalence in stereotype content: How societies mind the gap. British Journal of Social
Psychology, 52(4), pp.726-746.
Kluegel, J.R. and Smith, E.R., 2017. Beliefs about inequality: Americans' views of what is and
what ought to be. Routledge.
Stephan, Y., Sutin, A.R. and Terracciano, A., 2015. How old do you feel? The role of age
discrimination and biological aging in subjective age. PLoS One, 10(3), p.e0119293.

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Thaa, W., 2016. Issues and images–new sources of inequality in current representative
democracy. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 19(3), pp.357-375.