Promotion of Anti-Discriminatory Practice
In this essay, I am going to explain the main ways of promoting anti-discriminatory practice, which are; implementing government policies and guidelines at local level by managers and employees, staff training and development, challenging work colleagues who demonstrate discriminatory behaviour and telling a higher authority when rules are broken.
I am also going to give examples of these strategies being used in a setting, give difficulties to each strategy and also justify ways of overcoming the difficulties. Implementing government policies and guidelines at local level by managers and employees means that you are making sure that employees and managers follow and promote policies, procedures and guidelines which are set out by the government for health and social care settings to follow.
Examples of this being used is the manual handling policy being used when lifting and moving an elderly resident for a bath or out of bed, another example is the data protection act when storing hospital records of a patient in a safe environment where only professionals can get access to it and the last example is COSHH and being aware of how to deal with body fluids in a health and social care setting and how to deal with waste.
There are some difficulties that could arise when trying to use this strategy include staff in the setting be unaware of the policies, procedures and legislations that are in place to help the, untrained staff so they don’t really know what they are doing and the updating of policies and procedures.
Although there are difficulties, there are ways of overcoming these difficulties such as staff training, managers having a zero tolerance policy in the setting, assigning someone to update the policies, procedures and legislations on a regular basis as they change, regular meetings to ensure that all staff are aware of the training needed and having CPD (continuing professional development) sessions.
Using these ways to overcome the difficulties that arise during the strategy to identify discrimination is important because the less difficulties that there are for the strategy means that the strategy is more likely to work without any complications and will mean that all staff are trained to know all of the policies and procedures to help the service users and ensure that they are not in risk of harm. Staff training and development is there for service providers to use to teach new knowledge and to add to the workers knowledge, to teach all of the service workers of the policies and procedures and to keep them updated f any changes that happen within the policy and procedure and to ensure that they understand these changes and training and know how to put them into practice. An example of this being used is when service workers need to protect the service users from harm by using the safeguarding policy of the setting, another example is using the confidentiality procedure when a service user provides you with information that they don’t want sharing and your job is to keep to the procedure unless it puts the service user in harm, puts others in harm or they have convicted a serious offence.
Another example of this strategy being used in a health and social care setting is the data protection procedure when keep patients records safe in a hospital and not letting non-professionals see their records. Difficulties that could arise when using this strategy could be loss of concentration when being taught new training, confusion and not understanding what the training means, the tutor being confused and using the wrong words to teach the training and giving the wrong information and staff not attending the training.
There are ways to overcome these difficulties, these ways include; having training that is suited to the staff needs, for example, only giving them training which is desperately needed for their job role and not going of track to what they need, to make the training easy to use, easy accessible so the staff can get to it easily and won’t have any excuses not to turn up, to make the training flexible and maybe making it so that the staff won’t have to miss any of their job to do the training, to make the training interesting and finding different ways of learning, to make sure that all staff will turn up to the training make it compulsory so that they have to do the training to do the job but respect individuals values and beliefs and ensure comfortableness when the staff are doing the training so they are more likely to concentrate. Telling a higher authority when rules are broken means that all staff must know where to go to report any discriminatory behaviour in their setting, for example, reporting the incident to their manager or supervisor, but if it was their manager or supervisor who was being discriminated against or was doing the discriminatory behaviour, going to the external authority and knowing where to find them. An example of this is a nurse witnessing another nurse using di scriminatory behaviour against a patient; the witness must then pass it on their supervisors who will then resolve the problem. Another example is in a are home and a group of staff are being discriminated against by their supervisor because of their race, the staffs who are being discriminated against must report this behaviour to an external member of the setting – this is usually the authority or the manager of the care home/company. Difficulties that could arise when this strategy is putting put in practice include, staff may feel intimidated when going to high authority to report the incident and therefore may not report the incident causing the problem to get worse, the authority may not think that the problem is important so may not follow up the complaint for a while – or not at all, which would confuse the staff and make them feel worse because nothing is being done about their complaint and the behaviour from staff in the environment and some authority may not know how to deal with some discriminatory behaviour and therefore won’t do anything about the complaint.
Ways to overcome these difficulties include keeping the reporters name confidential, and the reporter making sure that the report is followed up by checking that something has been done or dealt with, another way is to make sure that all high authority is trained into knowing how to deal with discriminatory behaviour. Challenging work colleagues who demonstrate discriminatory behaviour means to take action against those who participate in discrimination within the environment who are discriminating against another – another work colleague or a service user. An example of this is if a staff member is discriminating against a student in the setting and treating them differently because they have a disability, the person who witnesses this discrimination must report this to the programme manager who would then deal with the staff member in the appropriate way.
Another example is a senior nurse reporting discriminating behaviour of another staff because of their mental health issue and the person who was given the report will look into the complaint and deal with the behaviour. Difficulties that can arise when this strategy is being put into action in a health and social care environment is there could be violence between staff members because of a reporting, there could be gossiping in the environment because a member of staff was dealt with because of discriminating behaviour, staff not knowing what discrimination is and therefore not knowing when or how to challenge other members of staff when they are using discriminating behaviour and the reporter may be victimised if the staff member who was discriminating finds out who reported them and they may feel uncomfortable around them.
Ways to overcome these difficulties is to use policies and procedures to ensure that staff knows what to do in a discrimination situation, staff knowing what discrimination is and having a better awareness of it, explain to staff members why you have reported them and give evidence of the discrimination. I am now going to explain how staff workers and employers in a health and social care setting can make sure that they don’t let personal beliefs and value systems get in the way of being a health and social care professional. The main ways we can do this is to develop greater self-awareness and tolerance of differences, committing to the care value base, careful use of language and working within legal, ethical and policy guidelines.
I am going to explain what these mean and also justify them, say why they are important to use in a health and social care environment. Developing a greater self-awareness and tolerance of differences means to know the about the differences between all individuals and understand that every individual will have different needs and to be aware of these needs and how to deal with them. This is important because this will tell staff members how to deal with anti-discriminatory and ensure that they understand how to deal with it, but also how to spot when discriminating behaviour is happening in the environment. Knowing when discrimination is happening and dealing with the situation will prevent situations in future happening between other staff members or service users.
Tolerance is important to ensure everyone has equal opportunities. It is essential that you are aware of how you think of yourself and how you treat others and the reasons behind your behaviour, by doing this you will become more aware of others needs and also of other’s needs. Committing to the care value base; ‘The care value base is a set of rules or regulations and guidelines that every care practitioner has to follow in order to provide service to their or other clients or patients’ [http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Care_value_base]. The main thee rules of the care value base are; promoting equality and diversity of service users, promoting individual rights and beliefs and maintaining confidentiality.
Committing to these rules means that whilst you are in the health and social care profession, you must not discriminate against any service users because of their age, culture, race, belief etc. , it also means that you must promote individuals rights and commit to their needs and know how to deal with their beliefs, these rules also include maintaining confidentiality, which means to not share personal information unless it is necessary. Committing to the care value base is important because it keeps the service users in your environment safe and out of harm, it also means that you will be honest with yourself and decide if you can commit to these rules; this will ensure that you can work within a health and social care environment.
Careful use of language means that you need to be aware of other people’s language and how you communicate with them, this is important because if you do not know the correct way to communicate with someone, they won’t be able to understand what you are trying to say to them and this could result in you giving them the wrong needs, wrong medication or leaving them in pain. It is important to ensure that you are communicating with a service user or worker in their preferred method of communication – this could be the spoken language, sign language, braille or another form of communication. Some people may use another person to support their communication such as an interpreter or translator. Using someone’s preferred communication is important because they need to understand what is happening to them in order for them to feel comfortable with you and to ensure that their health is being properly looked after.
Working within legal, ethical and policy guidelines, this means that there are a lot of guidelines to work by in the health and social care profession and working in the health and social care environments means that you are committed to using these guidelines to keep the service users safe. This is important so that service users don’t get in any harm and therefore will make your job easier to do if you know what to do in each situation. Following procedures of the setting that an individual is working in is important because it shows that they can understand the rules of the setting and are committed to working in the setting and committed to keeping other people’s lives out of risk of any harm that they may come into.
