Zest Care Organization - Case Study Example

Zest Care Organization (Name) (University Affiliation) (Date) Introduction Zest Care, which has been in existence for the last fifteen years is a community development organisation that is charged with offering a range of specialist In-Home Child Care plans to families across New South Wales. Currently, the organisation is working towards accommodating the needs of members associated with the National Insurance Disability Scheme (NDIS). As Toseland and Rivas (2009) postulate, community organisations often play a significant role in revitalising the neighbourhoods such as improving the living conditions of the less fortunate families, senior citizens, children, the mentally-challenged individuals as well as persons living with disabilities. Thus, a community organisation can be defined as the means of enabling a group of individuals or neighbourhood to find both fruitful and satisfying social relationships and not for certain as well as preconceived forms of relationships. Equally, DuBois and Miley (2013) defines community organisation as all the efforts associated with directing social resources effectively towards the particular or total welfare needs of any geographical area. In effect, this essay will analyse the Zest Care organisation in relation under various subheadings. The Purpose of Zest Care and the Community Needs Being Serviced Notably, Zest Care’s primary responsibility is to create, initiate as well as implement a series of continuous In-Home Child Care as well as Disability Support programs, which are approved by the government (Zest Care.net, 2016). The organisation offers quality as well as customised care programs that are founded on family needs as well as goals. The organisation incorporates various kinds of passionate as well as professional Educarers whose sole objective is to provide families with the best support available (Zest Care.net, 2016). Accordingly, these Educarers have specialised in mental health, special education needs, physical disabilities, behavioural difficulties as well as early childhood education. These skills and expertise have been invaluable to the community development and social work industry as the team has made a positive impact to the Australian community with regards to improving the quality the Australian families. To ensure that it gives quality services, Zest Care has formed a strategic partnership with Linx Institute, one of Australia’s leading training organisation (Zest Care.net, 2016). Linx Institute is known for training senior management teams as well as leaders. As a ratified approved Child Care as well Disability Support Provider, the organisation brings high-quality care as well as support into the homes of various Australian families. The organisation is determined to support the lives of children who would otherwise not be in a position to gain the basic rights that other Australian children are currently enjoying. The organisation strives to give every Australian child access to the best foundation in life as it often defines the rest of their lives. To provide quality services, the organisation often recruits In-Home Educarers as well as Disability Support providers or Carers who meet needed criteria as set by out by the various job descriptions. For one to be part of the organisation staff, he or she must have industry experience associated with the client’s family (Zest Care.net, 2016). Moreover, the applicant must have the current qualification as well as passion in order to be involved in the lives of children. Besides, anyone willing to join the organisation must be ready to work flexible hours. The criterion highlighted above, which is used to recruit qualified staff, indicates the commitment and profound determination the organisation has with regards to ensuring that it is giving valuable services to the community at large. How the Organisation Utilises Groups to Address its Auspice. According to Yanca and Johnson (2009), the formation as well as the utilisation of groups in community organisation is often essential at it accelerates the works needed to be done efficiently hence achieving the organisation’s objectives. Accordingly, Zest Care believes in teamwork hence significantly dependent on group efforts. In order to address its auspice, the organisation has divided its service provision into five categories. Zest Care believes that for quality service to be provided to the community, the concept of specialisation must be embraced. This is in line with Toseland, Haigler and Monahan (2011) point of view who posit that for groups to function efficiently, they must be aligned with their specialities. The leaders of various departments must ensure that there is a common ground between the needs of the client and the purpose of the group (Toseland and Haigler and Monahan, 2011). In other words, each group member must understand the purpose of their group and the reason it is linked with particular need. Bearing the above concepts in mind, Zest Care has divided its team into five categories which include Intake, In-Home Educarers, Disability Support Carer, Early Childhood Education Facilitator as well as Family Services. i. Intake Team This group of Carers is charged with supporting families as well as referring agents by giving advice with regards to eligibility as well as coordinating the application for the new referring families (Zest Care.net, 2016). ii) In-Home Educarer Team With a personalized as well as flexible approach to In-Home Child Care Education, all group members attached to the In-Home Educarer group are charged with the designing as well as delivering of tailored education programs or initiatives to all children within their care. As such, each member of this group also referred to In-Home Educarers is responsible for monitoring the child’s progress with regard to his or her learning and as such adjust education plans accordingly. Members of this group are also charged with advocating for the development of life skills as well as promote the independence and well-being of the children whenever possible (Zest Care.net, 2016). They are also responsible for monitoring and encouraging social interaction between the child, the rest of the family members and themselves. In addition, the In-Home Educarers are supposed to give professional care to the children under their care as well as the entire family. The group members are expected to flexible hours thus should often expect sometimes to work at short notice as well as adhere to the needs of the family. iii) Disability Support Worker Members of this group are professionally trained in various specialist care needs and as such the organisation’s Disability Support Workers have been trained to offer a compassionate approach to disability support. These social workers use tailored care programs that focus on realising the desired outcomes of the care recipients. The members of this group are supposed to work as a team towards ensuring that the encourage independence as well as promote well-being. Disability Support Workers are charged with ensuring that they encourage independence as well as promote the well-being of people with disabilities (Zest Care.net, 2016). These social workers are also responsible for innovatively as well as compassionately deliver Disability Support plans associated with the National Disability Insurance Scheme; these programs are customised around the recipient’s life goals. The social workers in this group often provide a flexible approach to specialised care. They also have to stick to the criteria outlined in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). iv) Early Childhood Education Facilitators Group The primary role as well objective of the Early Childhood Education Facilitators is to guide the In-Home Educarers with regards to developing programs around children. These include children with diverse needs as well as those living with various disabilities. The facilitators are also charged with facilitating positive outcomes for families that maybe going through extraordinary challenges or circumstances (Zest Care.net, 2016). All social workers working as In-Home Educarer are supposed to report the children’s progress to the Early Childhood Education Facilitator after every thirteen weeks in order to check if all that was set out in the programming as well as progress booklet has been followed to the latter. The Facilitator also confirms if the In-Home Educarers adhered to the Early Years Learning Scheme Australia (Zest Care.net, 2016). The progress associated with the In-Home Educarer is often monitored by the Early Childhood Education Facilitator who often visits phones calls as well as does home visits with the sole purpose of ensuring that the homes being given high level of childcare education. v) Family Services Team The social workers often recruited in this group or team solely focus on helping the families to get the appropriate, knowledge as well as skills that would in turn enable them to improve the general well-being of their children as well as family. As such, the group members associated with Family Services Team are responsible for visiting the homes at least once during their placement and making regular phones calls to guide them in improving their wellbeing. In addition, they also ensure that they often gather feedback, which would, in turn, lead to giving the families the appropriate advice, information as well as guidance to further support these families (Zest Care.net, 2016). The members of the Family Services Team are also charged with helping families as far as the implementation of exit strategies are concerned; they also transition these families into other identified service such as mainstream child care. More often than not, the group members under this category are required to maintain communication with the supporting agencies and those families they are supporting. They are also supposed to liaise with the appropriate services whenever they are requested of needed to do so. On occasion, the team members attached to the Family Services are often expected to attend family conferences, provide after-hours emergency support, provide conflict resolutions assistance and resolution as well as conduct a home safety checklist at least every six months. The implementation of Community Development Strategy Zest Care Notably, the Assignment 1 planned group program aimed at coming up with concrete and a profound plan that would help in addressing the needs of five cases of mothers with intellectual disabilities. As such, the program needed first to identify the parents with intellectual disability group and after that determine the specific needs that each group member needed. Overall, the following needs attached to the group were identified: i) Basic academic education ii) Postnatal care education support iii) Service coordination iv) Early intervention services as well as child care. v) Care and love vi) Financial management skills, vii) Psychotherapy services viii) Anger management skills As DuBois and Miley (2013) posits, a significant number of parents with intellectual disability often face challenges associated with parenting skills. In other words, these parents often have difficulties in parenting their child as expected by the community. For example, these parents often do not know how to about helping their children with homework, how to handle their children during conflicts as well as how to instill discipline among their children without interfering with the basic right of the children. Therefore, the implementation stage in section will focus majorly on educating this group (parents with intellectual disability) about parenting skill. In effect, the parents will learn formally from the social workers and informally, whereby they learn from their family members, other parents as well as friends. According to DuBois and Miley (2013) parenting is fundamentally associated with promoting child socializations in order to help the dependent child to develop as well as learn to take his or her place, as an adult as well as a participating member of the larger society or community. Accordingly, in order for the Assignment 1 plan to fit into zest Care organization, a step-by-step approach or strategy will be employed. As Arends (2014) postulates in behavioral teaching theory, social workers must be able to apply the step-by-step approach to their clients if they are to achieve a greater outcome that would result in effecting the instructions learned during the training sessions. Thus, looking at the Zest Care organisation the group which the program will service will fall under the In-Home Child Care segment (Zest Care.net, 2016). As stated in the planning stage, the program will ensure that the appropriate trainers, in this case the Educarers, are allocated to each parent in the five cases identified at the onset. Each Educarer will have to meet individual requirements as well the desired outcomes for the group, that is, parents with intellectual disabilities. In other words, Zest Care will partner the Educarers with parents with intellectual disabilities who ensure that the client needs have been fulfilled. Previously, some social workers have often employed ineffective strategies, which in the end yield little or no success and later on blame the recipients’ or parents’ cognitive limitations for their failure to learn (Tesoriero, 2010). Under the step-by-step approach, the parents will be called for the first meeting, whereby they will be introduced to the Educarers who will then initiate a rapport. Also during the first session, the parents with intellectual disabilities will get to know each other and choose leaders amongst themselves, this will bring in the concept of participation for change. According to Tesoriero (2010), programs aimed at helping the community can only be effective if the societal members affected by the program are encouraged to participate. They should be involved in the decision making, determination of the key actors as well as their roles during the program (Tesoriero, 2010). During the second session and the rest of the in-home training sessions, the facilitators will explicate to the parents the reason they would need carry our specific routines. As Tesoriero (2010) points out the social worker should not confuse knowledge with skills. Besides, being in a position to describe what they are supposed to do does really mean that the group members or parents with intellectual disabilities can actually do it (Tesoriero, 2010). Thus, it is important that assessments associated with parenting skills to include direct observation and not to rely primary on verbal report. In order, the needs addressed earlier to be addressed, a task-analysis session will be carried out whereby the parents will be interviewed profoundly hence identifying the specific skills and subskills needed in the training. The approach will also be effective in giving back the parents specific feedback during training. Pictorial posters, manuals, audios as videotapes will be used to enhance the practitioner-directed training as well as act as reminders to engage proper parenting practices. When the mother is practising a skill under the watch of the social worker, the Educarer may stop her as well as ask her what she should do. Much of the sessions will be conducted in the homes of the group members. Social work roles that can be used within Zest Care to address its auspice According to Tesoriero (2010) defining roles in community development programs is fundamental to the desired outcomes as it helps driving systematic implementation processes. Accordingly, various specific roles can be employed in Zest Care to address the organization’s auspice. To begin with, the social animation role will help the In-Home Educarer as well as the Family Services Team to inspire, motivate as well as stimulate other social workers within the organisation to participate in helping the mothers with intellectual disability as far as parenting skills are concerned (Tesoriero, 2010). Secondly, through the role of mediation and negotiation, a social worker can be appointed to intervene and convince parents with intellectual disability to agree to participate in the training program. Whenever there is conflict between the child and the parent during the program, the social worker who has been assigned the role of mediation and negotiation can often be brought in to intervene as he or she will have the ability to convince the parties that he or she is neutral thus get attention. The other key role that would be significant to the Zest Care organization is the support role, which would require the Educarers to give a backing to all aspects that are associated with the inspiration to take action such as changing the disciplinary measures that should be applied to the child. The support role can also be effected in a situation whereby the mother with intellectual disability does not know how to take care of a sick infant. Ultimately, is the organizing and group facilitation role, whereby the organization needs to ensure that there is an overall group facilitator as well as a leader who oversees the utilization of resources during the program. Notably, the Zest Care organisation often receives funding from well-wishers and as such these resources must be used for paying experts such paediatricians and other logistics. Conclusion In summation, the paper has been able to describe Zest Care’s auspice as well as explaining how they relate to the broader community. The paper has delineated how the organization utilizes groups in order to realize its auspice. Besides, the paper has clearly indicated how social work roles can be integrated with the Zest Care organization to address its auspices. Ultimately, the paper profoundly delineated the community development strategy that would be used to implement the program was designed to address the needs of parents with intellectual disability. References Arends, R. (2014). Learning to teach. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. DuBois, B. L., & Miley, K. K. (2013). Social work: An empowering profession. Pearson Higher Ed. Ledwith, M. (2011). Community development: A critical approach. Policy Press. Tesoriero, F. (2010). Community development: Community-based alternatives in an age of globalisation. Pearson Australia. Toseland, R. and Rivas, R. (2009). An introduction to group work practice. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. Toseland, R. W., Haigler, D. H., & Monahan, D. J. (2011). Current and future directions of education and support programs for caregivers. In Education and support programs for caregivers (pp. 149-158). Springer New York. Yanca, S. J., & Johnson, L. C. (2009). Generalist social work practice with groups. Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. Zest Care.net (2016). In-Home Child Care | Zest Care | Sydney, Wollongong, NSW. [online] Zest Care. Available at: http://zestcare.net.au/care-services/in-home-childcare/ [Accessed 22 Sep. 2016]. Read More