What is duity of care in a disablity perspective?
Disclaimer – That these are my own lived experiences and
understanding from the research that I
do around the NDIS and health-related topics please be aware that it is
informational only and not to be used as a substitute for professional advice
or working with a Planner, Disability Advocacy service or talking to your
Medical and Allied Health team.
So I am taking the time to do a deeper dive into what is duty
of care and in doing this we need to look at what the words are before we even
look at where the phrase is applied and how it works in a practical sense, and
I will be focusing on a disability perspective.
Duty as defined by [i]
the Merriam- Webster dictionary is defined as
: : obligatory tasks, conduct,
service, or functions that arise from one's position (as in life or in a group)
CHARGE, SUPERVISION left the
house in his care especially : responsibility for or
attention to health, well-being, and safety under a
doctor's care
So these come together to make the phrase that we
all know but don’t know the potential legal ramifications being that the phrase duty of care becomes, and it is a legal term in a
disability, aged care and hospital setting and it is part of a harm mitigation
and a reduction of risk in disability care however we see that in a disability settings
it is used in a very different way as it needs to be balanced with dignity of
risk and I will do a blog post on dignity of risk as well.
So the legal definitions of duty of care, and
this will vary from country to country we see that this taken from Wikipedia[ii], is a general overview, however, In a disability setting it’s not
that simple as we need to know several things about the client that the care worker
is supporting and this is where another phrase around NDIS comes into play
being Dignity of risk and I have a post coming on this but it is the other side
of the same coin with Duty of care, so in simple terms we see that duty of care is the duty towards the person
that the person is caring or supporting we see that they have a responsibility
to support and care for this person and this means helping or supporting them
to meet their daily basic needs if required, or to support them in more complex
ways.
In the more complex ways we see that this is where
the duty of care comes into play so does a person have all the information about
what they want to do to make an informed decision around the risk.?
Are they likely to harm themselves or others a his
is where duty of care and restrictive practices comes into play so I do have a
post planned around restrictive practices however we see that sometimes it is actually the support worker
doing the harm and so we need to be aware of this as well, so it is up to other
support workers and the persons informal support network to be able to spot abuse,
neglect and exploitation, and this is where things get tricky as what a
provider is able to for a person varies
from person to person and this makes things tricky but reflects person cantered
practice at the same time, and even the best support workers can get held back
by company culture, and if a companies culture isn’t great or the administration
staff in the offices aren’t communicating with the support and care staff on
the ground we see that this becomes an issue in that a person can leave an organization
due to the stress caused by the office. I know that I have kept with one of my
care organizations due to having some great support workers but have had to be
on the offices tail due to them being understaffed.
So this could potentially become a duty of care
issue do to not being able to communicate with clients in a timely manner or
having to roster supports in advance but having to constantly change rosters,
and have support workers check rosters vs being asked to do the shift and when
there is this constant changing it is stressful for both the client and the
support worker due to the fact that the need to explain their needs and often this
leads to them not being able to receive good quality supports and this is where
duty of care in a company culture and all the staff understanding person cantered
care is really important in what you are trying to achieve.
In a support worker it is important to have formal
training around this as a support worker is put in a position of power over a
person and some people unfortunately will abuse this power.
So the duty of care is the responsibility of all
providers to protect their clients from harm, and from harming others.
When we say harm in a physical sense is providing
a safe home or day centre environment, so this might be prompting with cleaning,
and other activities of daily living to maintain a house, and in Sil houses (
supported independent living) it might mean having a house meeting and talking
through any issues that need to be resolved.
It might also be meal planning a preparation as
well as medication management.
In harm to others it might be that the client
doesn’t understand some things about boundaries and personal space so that the client
might need to be taught about these things.
If the persons behaviours are triggered by foods
or beverages it might be that a restrictive practice needs to be in place
around food and not having foods that are highly processed.
In a housing sense you need to understand what is
called a ratio of support so this is how many clients to support workers in a house
and what their support needs are, as some providers do offer varying levels of
support depending on skill level and this is a tricky one that goes into dignity
of risk.
However this is a very basic beginning towards duty of care and I hope to do a series on it, into the future.
Comments
Post a Comment