What Makes for Good Quality Care in Residential Settings? Discuss Using Examples from Unit 15

A residential setting is a stable and safe place where people live and get services and support, ranging from on call assistance to twenty-four hours supervision. ‘Since April 2002, all homes in the U.K. are known as ‘care homes', but are registered to provide different levels of care'. (www.firststopcareadvice.org.uk.). There are two different types of registration for care homes, one is a care home simply registered as a care home providing personal care. In this case the care home will provide personal care to its residents like washing, taking residents to toilets, and giving medication. The other registration is a care home registered as a care home providing nursing, here the care home will provide personal care and have a qualified nurse on duty twenty-four hours a day to carry out nursing tasks.

There are other alternatives to residential settings, an individual may decide to be in a sheltered housing or extra- care housing scheme. This option offers independence with an increased level of care and support. An example is the ‘Sonali gardens' from the k101 module. (K101, Unit ?, pP.111).There are different reasons as to why people go into residential settings, an individual might be suffering from a chronic illness and needs constant attention such as dementia, lack of family to care for an individual, an individual wanting to be independent from his or her family members or an individual might be living in a disabling environment and needs to be in an environment that is not disabling.

Residential settings should be able to provide good quality care .Ga good quality care is' person-centred care'. Person-centred care is providing care that is centred on a person. It is taking into account individual's uniqueness, qualities, interests and their needs. In other words, it is inappropriate to assume that since X and Y have the same illness or disability, they should be treated the same or have the same support and care needs. This is what makes the difference between ‘person-centred care' and the care provided in institutions like hospitals and Cedar Court from the K101 module. Institutional care settings have four main characteristics that would not be practiced or should not be practiced in a good quality residential setting that provides ‘person-centred care'. Institutional settings have binary living, which is whereby people are not seen as individuals, they are all treated the same, given the same care and support. The other characteristic is binary management, the staffs behave as though they were superior to the residents, staff and the residents do not share the same rooms, and there is an atmosphere of two different worlds. The inmate role is another characteristic where the staffs talk about residents and decide how to treat or punish them when they go out of line. The last characteristic is the institutional perspective where residents are so scared of the staff that they can't express their feelings and try hard to please the staff in fear of being shouted at. These four characteristics should be avoided in good quality care residential settings.

To create a good quality care in a residential setting, it is important to for the environment where the home is situated to be safe and the environment in the building should be safe too and accessible to all residents and not disabling. The building should provide a choice to the residents, the residents should choose where they want to be. The building should also have a variety of spaces like a quiet lounge with no TV for residents who would like to sit among themselves and have a chat, and a lounge with TV, f. For those residents who enjoy watching TV. The building should be in a safe community as this will enable the residents to be part of the community and being in the community would make ease of public transportation for both the residents and their families and friends. If possible the building can provide a mosque or church for the religious residents to enable them to practice their beliefs. When iIndividuals live within a residential setting, this becomes their home. ‘Home is a physical and social space which supports the sense of identity and personal well-being of people who live there'. (K101, Unit ?, pP.61). This means that the building should provide opportunities to be personalised by residents if they feel or want to. There should be enough space for residents to have their own furniture, and they should be able to decorate their rooms according to their tastes. The building should be built in a way that it provides privacy to the residents. A way to ensure that residents get privacy is by ensuring that the layout of the building should separate public areas from the residents' bedrooms, bathrooms and toilets. It is important for residents to feel sSafe and protected when they are in the building, there should be enough lighting,