Learning Abilities - Thesis Example

The Psychosocial theory of dementia by Kitwoood and Bredin (Finnamore, and Lord, 2007) suggests that a proportion of decline in the learning abilities of such people is the resultant of the destructive environment that may be encountered in an assisted living facility. These environments may affect the personhood of an individual and may actually undermine it. The care which is not capable of maintaining well being may lead to distress and may actually further worsen the baseline learning ability.

These mostly elderly patients, especially when they are away from home and families, deserve care. This concept is the basis for assisted living facilities. However, ability to learn on the part of the residents is a very important parameter for effective care delivery. An effective care is based on interactions and communications. If these individuals have learning disability, it becomes very difficult on the part of the caregivers to understand the nature of any emerging difficulty (National Survey of Latinos, 2002).

Superimposed learning difficulty leads to more time in interactions. The communication becomes invariably different and difficult. This level of difficulty seems apparent in inability of the care professionals to understand their problems which appears to merge eventually to a thinking that these individuals would need either care by specially trained professionals and hence general professionals would not need to bother about the need for any quality care for these individuals. The net result is ordinary care is very sparsely available, and the health and other care needs of this segment of population is either unmet or very poorly met (Mossakowski, 2003).

Therefore, there is a need for robust social model of support in the community level, and in the institutional setting such as assisted living facilities, may people are placed in lonely and segregated settings where a joint work between healthcare and social care services based on the appropriate understanding of their care needs is required. Therefore, it would be prudent to understand the degrees and types of learning disabilities of this population so a care design can be done which could be more effective.

There are consequently a number of factors need to be considered. This population is ageing, which is associated with dementia and other long-term mental health problems, both of which may lead to intellectual impairment and hence learning disability, all of which are considered to be barriers for quality service delivery (Moradi & Risco, 2006).Review of LiteratureAge is an important contributor to learning disability in the elderly population. The three basic changes that occur in this population are effects of aging and dementia, metal deterioration and cognitive impact on learning capabilities, and learning disabilities due to language barriers.

There may be a question why specifically the Hispanic population in the United States. Steinberg et al. (2003) indicated that the Hispanics constitute the largest minority group in the United States, and they account for 12.5% of the total population. This is a rapidly growing US group of minority who mainly descend from the immigrant families deriving their identities from Mexico, Central and South America, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. As per US Census Bureau Report (2001), despite