Ethics of Care and Social Policy Assignment - Case Study Example

Ethics of care and Social Policy assignment Name Instructor Course Code + Name Date: Part one: Case study analysis ¥ Identify issues relating to the responsibilities for care. The issues related to taking care of a mentally handicapped include emotional and psychological challenges on the caregiver. In fact, four different themes emerged in the case study where Pauline narrates how adopting Simon came with several challenges. These themes include both Pauline and her husband Billy having disturbing thoughts, communication difficulties, emotional disturbances and unavoidable situations as shall be mentioned in the text below. Pauline vividly narrates the way she and Billy experienced different disturbing thoughts in their quest to take care of mentally handicapped Simon. In addition, Pauline recounts the way they were stressed by the explicit behaviors Simon had and this not only caused to them problems but even the people who they were in touched with like neighbors and teachers at the school where they took Simon (Alkon et al., 2014). These problems worsened because Simon could sometimes become aggressive, destructive, noisy, not able to eat properly and hyperactive. Pauline accepts having found caring for Simon very difficult because the way he was someone could imagine who does not deserve to be in a community where the rest live particularly during the time when they found him. This is because Simon’s actions were totally strange and could not be accepted people around. Pauline says that they could go with him some thinking that everything is well; however, his behavior was disgusting that it become very difficult to go with him even to social places like church thus they could sometimes opt to leave him back at home. Another they experienced in the process of taking care of Simon was the future worry which also greatly disturbed their thoughts very much since they were not able to accomplish some of their social and personal needs which include being able to find him school and self-care (Aronson & Shope, 2016). In fact, these concerns came since Simon was not able to undertake several development tasks which are being expected to a child of his age such us being able to bath, eat and dress without their help. In case study 2 which is the story of Pauline and her husband, the two narrate a story concerning the adoption of children and the issues associated with caring for such children. The first child they adopted was Simon at the age of five. The child Simon as mentally challenged as well as being suspected of other mental health problems. Simon experienced several mental health issues which forced Pauline and her husband Bill to take him to a dential unit where he was interviewed about his health history (Bick, 2015). This time Simon had reached 29 years old and Pauline's husband Bill had died. The experience that Pauline had acquired from being a nurse in one of the acute hospitals made her be able to take care of Simon, the mentally handicapped child. The work Pauline did at the Children's hospital made her able to work with people like Simon who are mentally disabled. However, Pauline was raised up in a humble family by her disabled grandmother whom they lived with. Pauline realized that she was barren and could not conceive immediately after marrying Billy and that was the reason why they decided to adopt. These made them adopt their first baby Jackie who made them to give up a paid work and thus became foster parents. However, Pauline and her husband Billy were not able to adopt a child since babies for adoption were not available during that time, and that made them explore an option of adopting the mentally handicapped child Billy (Breck et al., 2014). Indeed they felt that Billy needed financial protection and security of life at that time. However, they realized that their names had been deleted from the list of the foster parents by the local authority meaning their application to the adoption societies was not successful. This situation made both Pauline and Billy to appeal to the Ombudsman for the societies to reverse their decisions, however; at long last, they saw an advert which was advertising Billy, and that is how they managed to adopt Billy. Pauline remembers the way Billy was highly disoriented when they first met him because of being undernourished. In fact, he could only hear what was being said to him though he was not able to answer (Bruce et al., 2013). Wherever, Simon wanted to ask for food, he could only say ‘mmm, ' and when he needed attention from anyone, he could just hand on that person's sleeves. He was not even able to dress himself up though he was able to eat and use the toilet. Indeed Pauline and Billy faced several challenges in their quest to look for Simon school where he could learn. It became very difficult to find Simon school because he was nearly six years when he was adopted, and it seemed they could not easily find a school to take him to. No one school was willing to take Simon at first place since he even needed speech therapy first. Simon had two major problems which included being over aged start school and also not being able to speak (Burchinal et al., 2014). These two problems made it tough to find him a suitable school where he could learn. In fact, this forced Pauline to take Simon to her counselor’s house ¥ Explore the relationship between paid and unpaid care. The case study shows the relationship that exists between paid and unpaid care services. Indeed transforming child care especially for the mentally handicapped child liker Simon in the case study based on private to public realm requires series of economic benefits in order to enhance their standard of living. The case study of Pauline and Billy in taking care of the mentally handicapped Simon explores both the negative and positive impacts that were associated with social care based on both the care providers and receivers perspectives (Evertsson, 2014).. These benefits raged from higher returns on education and private caring in order to enhance the health outcomes and welfare of the mentally handicapped child. In fact, the whole economy spillovers in caring for such kids are very important as have been seen in the case study. Unpaid mentally handicapped care can be seen to be reducing costs of care to the care receiver perspective and can help in generating long-term economic growth to the parents of the child being taken care of. However, home-based unpaid care impact very negatively on the economic situation of care givers as have been seen in the case of Pauline and Billy thus this can undermine their economic productivity. Being not paid as a care giver results into inadequate care and can lead to inadequate care to the child (Geurts et al., 2015). However, the paid social care can greatly help to improve the economic welfare of the care givers. This shall also help in lowering psychologically and physically burdens of such child’s care like in the case of Pauline and Billy. Paid care services are very important since they help in creating job opportunities for the care givers. Indeed the social care for disable children should also be considered as very important since it improves living standards of such children especially during this period of fiscal austerity. Paid care services can as well enhance the quality of care providers and encourage them in providing quality care. The economic wellbeing of the paid caregiver enables him/her to improve the health and satisfaction of the child like Simon being taken care of thus greatly lowers the care burdens and stress attached to such activities. The benefits of paid care can also spill over in a society and result in economic growth of the care providers. Consequently, this can help the public in supporting the idea of proper social care to young people like Simon who is handicapped in the case study. This shall meaningfully assist in expanding the care services thus improving the quality of life especially during times of long recession in such children (Gordon et al., 2013). In fact, the demanding child care and adoption to disable and parentless children services reflects the need to expand the public care provision. Mentally handicapped children like Simon needs to be enrolled in any self-based program to enable them get the necessary help. Just like has been realized in the case study majority of a child who stays at home during such critical times when they need proper care to build their skills as this shall help to change their future trajectory welfare. ¥ Explore the relevant policy areas The policy guidelines for caring for a disabled child like Simon provides a framework for administering the correct mental health care services for Simon based on national and local healthcare based on health care approaches. These policies are always developed with regards to international legislations, policies and treaties which address the enhancement of these children survival, protection and development. The policy needs to adopt a holistic approach to enable care givers like Pauline and Billy address the variety of risks and protection factors which normally affect the mental health of such children. The casual factors as contained in the policy guidelines exists in the form of emotional, social and physical domains of such mentally challenged children’s welfare. However, the challenges and risks that are linked to such mental problems are likely to involve child abuse based on the protective aspects like good health care services. The policy also explores the relationship that exists amid the nature of the casual factors and the developmental age of such mentally handicapped children like Simon. This needs intersectoral interventions in the child’s mental health services aiming at reducing risks impacts in strengthening the protective factors of the child (Harding, L.F., 2014). The policy also needs to provide the guidelines for proper understanding of the requirements of mental health treatment of the child thus servers as a structure of implementing the general intervention approaches of the child. The policy shall focus on the following approaches of the child. i. Optimal mental growth as a foundation of the child mental care. ii. Also, outlines the relationship amid various mental developmental and competency areas. iii. The risks and critical opportunities in the life of such children and the extent of their developmental stages as dependent on the full mental health care. iv. The policy also provides the spiritual and socio-cultural aspects of the care which can help in shaping the cognition, attitude and the behavior of the child. v. The policy shall be able to provide spiritual and social-cultural aspects which can shape the mentally handicapped child's cognition, behavior, and attitude which help in determining the mental health status of the child during his health care intervention. vi. Moreover, the policy provides the guidelines for the caring of highly vulnerable mentally handicapped children regarding their poor backgrounds which are normally characterized by abnormalities. vii. The policy also provides the centrality with regards to gender, for example, the gender influences which include vulnerability resulting from discrimination. ¥ Describe key issues relating to relationships between care receiver, lay carer, and professionals. There are several issues that are related to the relationships amid the caregivers, carers and the professionals as having been seen in the case study of Pauline and Billy in adopting the mentally challenged child, Simon. In fact, in recognizing as well as supporting the care relationships, the policy acknowledges the importance of distinguishing the relationships that exist amid the family connections, personal and regulated care providers (Harris & Bruey, 2015. Indeed the care provided by the care providers to the mentally handicapped children like Simon normally depend entirely on the context of proper relationships between care receiver, lay carer, and professionals. These issues that exist amid these people needs recognition and proper supporting care relationships towards such in tackling them. This means people should not move a way in focusing on the needs of the caregivers as well those who are being cared for like Simon in the case study. Therefore, an integrated approach is needed to help address the dynamic interconnections that exist in the relationships between caregivers, carers and the professionals. The caregivers, carers and the professional needs to be consulted when developing the care policy and the issues they raise also needs to be reflected in a new policy structure as well as the action plans which have been developed with regards to these children leaving with disabilities like Simon with mental illness (Jonason et al., 2014). In addition, a detailed consultation is needed with the incorporation of a range of caregivers and professionals in formulating such policy plans. Indeed the proper coordination concerning the relationship between caregivers, carers and the professionals is needed to continuously help in coming up with such policy framework of caring for the disabled children. ¥ Identify issues that relate to social justice and discuss how an ethic of care analysis might apply. In identifying the social justice and ethical care issues, a detailed ethics care and normative theory ought to be used in care analysis of children leaving with disabilities. With regards to social justice and moral theories, it is important to know that ethics in child care is imperative at both personal and communal levels. The independent morals and social justice framework in child care can be identified based on the virtue ethics and social justice. This care analysis view is also important in the political and social justice perspectives (Gordon et al., 2013). Ethics care and social justice have been established to be more promising as compared to the utilitarianism since the central values of care can be addressed under the policy. The ethics and social justice in child care begins with several features which include ethics care as the moral salience and helps in addressing the needs of these children. Secondly, the social justice and ethical care can be looked in the perspectives of epistemological ethics regarding care emotional values as well as appreciating abilities of the morally concerned person’s in the caring contexts. An issues in social justice and ethics care is the view regarding dominant moral theories that needs to be used to eliminate biases and arbitraries of care. The idea of social justice and ethics care considerations can help in tackling the claims regarding specific people whom the caregivers need to partner with (McConachie, 2016). Social justice and ethics care lead to a conceptualization of the differences amid public and private, caring processes. Also, social justice and ethics care always adopts the relation that exists among the care receiver, lay carer, and professionals. These issues and the way ethical care apply is critical in coming up with a proper policy plan of caring for disable child like Simon as seen in the case study. Part two: Policy Analysis • Identify the relevance of the policy to your chosen case study A clearly written policy is very important in child care since they form a basis of quality child care practice. These policies normally help the child care professionals in the process of making informed decisions regarding child care. Consequently, developing these child care policies needs the involvement of all the stakeholders in order to help the caregivers understand deeply what care giving entails (Harding, 2014). The policy helps to know who is responsible for responsible for the care giving and also in identifying where the caring practice is suppose to take place as well as the way it should be done. Therefore, these policies must be made available to everyone. The policy provides a clear explanation of the practices of implementing a consistent child care services. Child care policies outline what needs to of taking care of the disable child. Policies provide adequate guidance for the daily decision making and woke to help the child care professions promote excellent results in undertaking the duty of child care. Moreover, it is good to ensure that the child care policies are made physical and accessible in order to enable the child care professionals produce high quality care services (Schumacher, 2016). These policies need to be put in a strategic place like in the notice boards where every child care professional can be able to see them. For example, it is good to display the hand washing policies in places like bathrooms where everyone can be able to see them. However, it is very important to have necessary child care policies that the volunteer and caring staff needs to know. These policies would include hygiene, food safety measures, child protection and signing of children in as well as out of the care. • Analyze the extent to which ethic of care principles are present within the policy Ethics implies that there is need for morals in the process of undertaking the child care practices. The ethics care tries to maintain the links amid promoting and conceptualizing of the child welfare among the caregivers and the children who are being cared for with regards to their social relations (Sullivan, Billari, & Altintas, 2014). The ethics care is normally defined as the practices of virtue and it involves meeting the needs and maintains these needs. This ethics care provides the care motivation which is geared towards the children who are vulnerable and dependent. This ethic care normally inspires the idealization and memories of self. In fact, based on the sentimentalism of ethics theory, the ethics care underlines t he significance of caring motivation, moral deliberation and emotion. The works of care ethics have been greatly linked to the scholar Carol Gilligan and other philosophers like Nel Noddings who did a lot of works which are attributed towards the works ethics acre. This ethics care perspective tends to reduce any form of bias during child care as well as asserting the voice care approaches regarding the legitimate justice perspective approaches of the liberal human rights. In fact, among the scholars who came up with the ethics care include Joan Tronto, Eva Feder Kittay, Sara Ruddick and Annette Baier. These were some of the key scholars who contributed significantly to the care ethics (Wilkin, 2016). Care ethics can be contrasted with deontological ethics and the care ethics which have been established to be having moral perspectives affinities. These moral ethics affinities comprised of Confucian ethics and African ethics. However, a number of critics have rendered ethics in child care useless by arguing that it is a king of slave morality which has several disadvantages like parochialism, ambiguity and essentialism. A number of feminist ethics have been explored in the child care ethics even though ethics care is not synonymous with it. • Critically analyze the policy objectives and explore the extent to which these reflect the experiences of those who give and / or receive care. Among the objectives of the child care policy is to make the child care subsidy resources available as well as the information which are useful to the families with regards to child care. The policy also advocates for the increased subsidy for the local, national and international families who care for children in order to enable them carry to out the practice adequately. In addition, the policy is expected to research regarding the child care needs, the costs and benefits that come with childcare practices (Sullivan, Billari, & Altintas, 2014). The child care policies provide the information and consultation to the agencies, organizations and the pub-makers which are responsible for enhancing child care practices. The objective of the policy is to develop and give out useful information concerning accessibility and high quality care for the children which able to meet the needs of these families who take care of children living with disabilities. They advocate for improving child care practices and also to develop technical assistance as well as education programs with regards to enhancement of quality child care. The retention and compensation provided under the policy which can help to improve their care. They also improve the standards of child care as well as improving the supportive services and compensation in order to enhance local, national and international child care. Another objective of the policy is to carry out studies concerning improving the quality of child care. Moreover, they set standards for child care programs and their development, evaluation and implementation aiming at continuous quality improvement of child care (Sullivan, Billari, & Altintas, 2014). The policy is also used to develop, disseminate and maintain the information technology which shall allow effective and efficient child care services. In fact, the objectives are able to provide convenient, cultural, respectful and usable competent child care services. Another objective of the policy is to ensure provision where all the child care parties are able to share all the responsibilities of child care. The policy helps in evaluating child care programs and assessment which comprise the modification of such programs to help improve the quality of child care services. Another objective of the child care policy is to make the caregivers provide ethical behaviors during the process of caring. The policy helps the caregivers to demonstrate exemplary rates, job satisfaction and employee benefits of the various caregivers. Moreover, the policy can help in increasing the child care funding as well as ensuring a supportive and high quality infrastructural which would facilitate child care practices. Bibliography Alkon, A., Crowley, A.A., Neelon, S.E.B., Hill, S., Pan, Y., Nguyen, V., Rose, R., Savage, E., Forestieri, N., Shipman, L. and Kotch, J.B., 2014. Nutrition and physical activity randomized control trial in child care centers improves knowledge, policies, and children’s body mass index. BMC public health, vol. 14, no. 1, p.215. American Academy of Pediatrics, 2013. National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child Care and Early Education. (2011). Caring for our children: National health and safety performance standards; Guidelines for early care and education programs, 22. Aronson, S.S., and Shope, T.R., 2016. Managing infectious diseases in child care and schools. American Academy of Pediatrics. Bick, A., 2015. The quantitative role of child care for female labor force participation and fertility. Journal of the European Economic Association. Breck, A., Goodman, K., Dunn, L., Stephens, R.L., Dawkins, N., Dixon, B., Jernigan, J., Kakietek, J., Lesesne, C., Lessard, L. and Nonas, C., 2014. Peer Reviewed: Evaluation Design of New York City’s Regulations on Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Screen Time in Early Child Care Centers. Preventing chronic disease, 11. Bruce, T., Meggitt, C., and Grenier, J., 2013. CACHE Level 3 Child Care and Education. Hachette UK. Burchinal, M., Vernon-Feagans, L., Vitiello, V., Greenberg, M. and Family Life Project Key Investigators, 2014. Thresholds in the association between child care quality and child outcomes in rural preschool children. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 1, pp.41-51. Evertsson, M., 2014. Gender ideology and the sharing of housework and child care in Sweden. Journal of Family Issues, vol. 35, no. 7, pp.927-949. Geurts, T., Van Tilburg, T., Poortman, A.R. and Dykstra, P.A., 2015. Child care by grandparents: changes between 1992 and 2006. Ageing and Society, vol. 35, no. 06, pp.1318-1334. Gordon, R.A., Fujimoto, K., Kaestner, R., Korenman, S. and Abner, K., 2013. An assessment of the validity of the ECERS-R with implications for measures of child care quality and relations to child development. Developmental Psychology, vol. 49, no. 1, p.146. Harding, L.F., 2014. Perspectives in child care policy. Routledge.# Harris, S.L., and BRUEY, C.T., 2015. Families of the developmentally disabled. Handbook of Behavioural Family Therapy, p.181. Lamb, M.E., Sternberg, K.J., Hwang, C.P. and Broberg, A.G., 2014. Child care in context: Cross-cultural perspectives. Psychology Press. Jonason, P.K., Lyons, M. and Bethell, E., 2014. The making of Darth Vader: Parent–child care and the Dark Triad. Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 67, pp.30-34. McConachie, H., 2016. Parents and young mentally handicapped children: A review of research issues. Routledge. NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2016. Child-care structure→ process→ outcome: Direct and indirect effects of child-care quality on young children's development. Psychological Science. Schumacher, K., 2016. Over 1.2 million California children eligible for subsidized child care did not receive services from state programs in 2015. Sullivan, O., Billari, F.C. and Altintas, E., 2014. Fathers’ changing contributions to child care and domestic work in very low–fertility countries: The effect of education. Journal of Family Issues, vol. 35, no. 8. pp.1048-1065. Wilkin, D., 2016. Caring for the mentally handicapped child. Routledge. Read More

The experience that Pauline had acquired from being a nurse in one of the acute hospitals made her be able to take care of Simon, the mentally handicapped child. The work Pauline did at the Children's hospital made her able to work with people like Simon who are mentally disabled. However, Pauline was raised up in a humble family by her disabled grandmother whom they lived with. Pauline realized that she was barren and could not conceive immediately after marrying Billy and that was the reason why they decided to adopt.

These made them adopt their first baby Jackie who made them to give up a paid work and thus became foster parents. However, Pauline and her husband Billy were not able to adopt a child since babies for adoption were not available during that time, and that made them explore an option of adopting the mentally handicapped child Billy (Breck et al., 2014). Indeed they felt that Billy needed financial protection and security of life at that time. However, they realized that their names had been deleted from the list of the foster parents by the local authority meaning their application to the adoption societies was not successful.

This situation made both Pauline and Billy to appeal to the Ombudsman for the societies to reverse their decisions, however; at long last, they saw an advert which was advertising Billy, and that is how they managed to adopt Billy. Pauline remembers the way Billy was highly disoriented when they first met him because of being undernourished. In fact, he could only hear what was being said to him though he was not able to answer (Bruce et al., 2013). Wherever, Simon wanted to ask for food, he could only say ‘mmm, ' and when he needed attention from anyone, he could just hand on that person's sleeves.

He was not even able to dress himself up though he was able to eat and use the toilet. Indeed Pauline and Billy faced several challenges in their quest to look for Simon school where he could learn. It became very difficult to find Simon school because he was nearly six years when he was adopted, and it seemed they could not easily find a school to take him to. No one school was willing to take Simon at first place since he even needed speech therapy first. Simon had two major problems which included being over aged start school and also not being able to speak (Burchinal et al., 2014). These two problems made it tough to find him a suitable school where he could learn.

In fact, this forced Pauline to take Simon to her counselor’s house ¥ Explore the relationship between paid and unpaid care. The case study shows the relationship that exists between paid and unpaid care services. Indeed transforming child care especially for the mentally handicapped child liker Simon in the case study based on private to public realm requires series of economic benefits in order to enhance their standard of living. The case study of Pauline and Billy in taking care of the mentally handicapped Simon explores both the negative and positive impacts that were associated with social care based on both the care providers and receivers perspectives (Evertsson, 2014).. These benefits raged from higher returns on education and private caring in order to enhance the health outcomes and welfare of the mentally handicapped child.

In fact, the whole economy spillovers in caring for such kids are very important as have been seen in the case study. Unpaid mentally handicapped care can be seen to be reducing costs of care to the care receiver perspective and can help in generating long-term economic growth to the parents of the child being taken care of. However, home-based unpaid care impact very negatively on the economic situation of care givers as have been seen in the case of Pauline and Billy thus this can undermine their economic productivity.

Being not paid as a care giver results into inadequate care and can lead to inadequate care to the child (Geurts et al., 2015). However, the paid social care can greatly help to improve the economic welfare of the care givers.

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