Working in Partnership for Health and Social Care Organizations

Working in Partnership.

1.1 Explain the philosophy of working in partnership in health and social care.

In health and social care, partnership is defined as the coming together of a number of healthcare organizations to work together by contributing different know-hows, experiences, capabilities, resources, experiences, means and modus operandi.

They do so to create a platform that helps the organizations within health and social care to be more efficient and to collectively attain heights they could not have attained alone as well as improve on the general quality of service especially because individual organizations have code of conducts, practices, legal and ethical issues that they deal with.

Organizations do work in partnerships to reduce gaps in the provision and delivery of health and social assistance services. This is achieved through the combination of various resources, such as qualified personnel, medical equipment and pharmaceutical products that are required for the efficient provision of medical and social care services. According to Glasby and Littlechild (2002), working in partnership also allows organizations to provide a wider range of services more effectively. This has resulted in greater consumer satisfaction and has provided more health and welfare benefits to target consumers.

There are three philosophies I would love to talk about in this regard

Empowerment:

This has to do with the way by qualified employees can require, access and share information as a way of using it for problem solving activities and enhancing the quality of care delivery to produce excellent customer service and optimal organizational accomplishment of goals and objectives. It is premised on the hypothesis that when employees are equipped with necessary know-how, resources, authorization, freedom and motivation as well as with necessary accountability parameters for check and balances, they can produce competently, excellently and satisfactorily.

This is because empowerment helps to build confidence and increase the determination and courage needed to channel innate and acquired skills such as analytical and communication skills to excellently. It also increases the emotional intelligence needed to deal with others and maturity needed to handle and use information in the way that will safeguard the privacy and security of service users.

Autonomy:

According to the Health and Quality Information Authority, autonomy can be defined as the granting of respect, dignity and privacy to people and their choices, it is an essential principle in health and social care that allows service users to make informed decisions in their care plan, the type of support they need and appropriate treatments and standard of care they will be happy to be served

This is because service users are entitled contributing to issues and events that will help better their lives as well as in making informed decisions about issues that affect them.

When service users exercise their free choice, it is the duty of caregivers to assist with

the process involved. It is also important to consider the role of “autonomy” when seeking to work in partnerships in health and social care. Helen (2010).

Power Sharing.

This is closely related to empowerment and describes the way organizations have come up with the right way patient and service users’ information and medical records are used in such a way by qualified professionals in the course of their duty. It also ensures that while this is happening, service users and or their family are in the know as they are actively involved in planning and are informed about how their care plan is be used, modified and accessed when need be

All in all, organizations can choose to work in associations to enable them to comply with various legal requirements imposed by regulatory authorities, such as national and federal governments.

1.1  Evaluate partnership relationships within health and social care services.

Partnership means having people from different personal, cultural and professional background come together to form a functioning work relationship in order to obtain and deliver a quality service. Partnerships helps to develop all round approaches to health and social care delivery.

In a health and social care context it describes the relationship existing between work colleagues, managers and employees and carers and service users. According to Jon and Helen (2010), studies have shown that three main types of professional relationship exist within health and social care and they include:

1. Service user partnership level.
2. Professional partnership level.
3. Organizational partnership level.

Partnerships work when individuals cooperate. This is vital in promoting correspondence between employees and managers or employees and the organization.

Service user partnership level.

This occurs on two levels

i. Partnership level of service user: Working in partnership is efficient for service users, because health professionals are put on their toes to be productive, alert and effective when carrying out their duties. This kind of

The partnership encompasses a broad range of service users from: migrants to the aged and senior citizens, young children, mentally incapable people and those living with disabilities.

Additionally, there are those who provide services but are not necessarily professionals carers and they include: friends, families and other social workers. We see that these non-professionals help with chores like the cleaning of the house and cooking. (Payne, 1995).

Benefits.

This kind of service is beneficial in a number of ways:

i. Service users and our clients get support from the community and social services.

ii. There is a sense of togetherness that happens in a way that service users can be able to express themselves and how they are feeling health wise to health and social personnel.

iii. Service and clients are delighted because friends, family and loved ones are part of those treating them

Partnerships are formed with local clinical commissioning group, health and well-being boards.

ii. Partnership level of professional:

This particular type of partnership comes in two ways which are: the partnerships between practitioners and service users and the partnerships existing between two or more professionals working together (practitioner to practitioner) to achieve a common goal.

A practitioner/ user relationship is one that is characterized by professionalism and commitment to delivering on these promises of quality services, it naturally produces a sense of aura and guarantees service users quality services delivered as promised by a consistent professional.

A professional to professional relationship helps professional to collectively solve problems, as well as gives room for sharing ideas, responsibilities, duties and know-how.

Benefits.

There are a lot of benefits to be derived from this kind of partnership and they include:

i. approaching issues in a holistic and serious way that will easily see clearly defined goals been achieved efficiently.

ii. It gives room for sharing new and effective knowledge between and among colleagues

iii. It provides a great level of rapport and understanding between professionals and colleagues.

Organizational level partnership:

This is the type of partnership that happens when there is a collaboration between different agencies, individuals and healthcare organizations (both private and public) to afford service users from various communities the best of quality, affordable and available services.

This level of partnership ultimately translates to better service delivery for users and drives the culture of partnerships for improved health and social care and better service delivery.

Benefits.

Its benefits are numerous, as seen in the collaborations between not just between doctors and health and social care practitioners but also with local commissioning groups as well as health and well-being boards.

Anthony Douglas in 2008 talked about in his book how working in partnership across the UK led to people and organizations meeting their objectives. He asserted that things like satisfactory communication, collaborations and better coordination of activities tend to stem from work related collaborations. The central and regional governments have indeed come up with laws to aid partnerships between clinical commissioning groups, health and social care services and homes, GPs and other healthcare organizations and professionals within and outside the healthcare industry.

It is now common practice to see partnerships between GPs, social workers, care homes and even pharmacists and chemical engineers work together and collaborate in a number of beneficial ways such as production and supply of drugs and medical equipment to aid health and social care.

Another closely related example is the timely supply of medical equipment to several health and social care locations on time and with these right kinds of partnerships and management there will be little or no conflicts and crisis as the active collaborations will help to figure out how the right amount of supply needed coupled with the right timing to get things done.

The United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Health has made an impressive step in the revolution of medical care for creating ecological social concerns in the country by partnering with clients and communities to develop and improve health services. health care in the country. the country. A company Health Alkonline has been developing services for over 5 years with events and a way for people to work and participate in various health and wellness activities in the UK. The program mainly involves the development of charitable organizations, the participation of medical research experts using the best technique that can be applied in the interest of the population (VanVactor, 2013). Developments led by the group’s researcher helped define different policies that generated awareness, assessed opportunities, management and use of available resources to achieve a more beneficial outcome.

The philosophy of independence in this area has the ability to make decisions that can affect a person’s life without the control of others and family members. It is a situation in which a person is not under the control of others and has control over his affairs. Here, patients have the autonomy to choose the form of treatment and can easily self-regulate according to their needs (Davies, 2000). The philosophy of equity guides the distribution of social assistance opportunities and each client has access to health services. However, respect within the association is also a key factor, as partners working together have common goals and this relationship is ultimately based on mutual understanding and mutual respect of the skills and abilities needed to obtain beneficial results.

Similarly, UKCRC has also developed policies to seek donations and to encourage the idea of ​​partnerships with diverse clients and to achieve similar interest. Working in partnership, some philosophies reinforce work, such as empowerment, humanity, independence, trust, equity and respect (Balloch and Taylor, 2001). The philosophy of empowerment focuses on the process by which people can gain greater control over different decisions and actions that will affect their health. This is very important because they are essential for the foundation and the development of an effective relationship between the professional and the client.

2.1 Analyse models of partnership working across the health and social care sector.

There are three major forms of partnerships that we have across the health and social care settings. They include the hybrid model, the unified model and the coalition models.

The coalition model: In this type of partnership model, there is a lot of partnerships between the private and public sector but they have things they do individually without any help or collaboration for partnerships. According to Rogers and Mead., 2004 his means they is a federating or structure under which they all collaborate but they also individual structures they benefit from on an individual level that does not involve collaborations. The benefit of this is that partnerships can collaborate in some activities and work individually in others especially in ones involving sensitive information and data that cannot be divulged anyhow.

The Unified model: This model dwells on making service provisions even in partnership personalised so that each service user is treated as a unique person with unique healthcare needs and requirements. The model makes care person-centred fitted to the individual service user and their family’s needs in synchrony with that of the health care organizations and partnership organizations to achieve the best standard of care. In achieving this, service users are first evaluated uniformly by several members of staff from organizations within the partnership network to prevent repetitive, duplicative and unproductive assessment.

The Hybrid Model: This describes a public /private partnership model in which a service user leverages on the the income from their business or entrepreneurship to pays for some of the service he is using to reduce dependence on government while he also accesses government funding and or facilities to get the services private sector is not providing or providing in an expensive way. The goal of this model is to make users get a combination of both sectors thereby getting a better cumulative service and improve on the health and economic outcomes of the citizens. This model is although difficult to implement as a lot of private health settings do not have the kind of capacity and funding that the government institutions have so they are not able to attract the best of hands and use the best of resources to scale their operations.

According to (Kelly Hall et al. 2016) there are hybrid centres springing up and are gradually eliminating the demarcations between the private, public and third sectors with the aim of ensuring that any excess or free money found in these sectors are channelled to fund health and social care needs among others

2.2 Review current legislation and organisational practices and policies for partnership working in health and social care.

There are numerous laws and legislations being used to coordinate policies used for health and social care partnerships.

The 2014 care act was able to help bridge some gaps as regards working in partnership by providing framework as to the way, manner, approach and timings that is conducive for services to work together. It is a good act because it has now made organizations, local councils and relevant governmental agencies to be more conscious of their direct responsibilities in making partnerships work and the laws and guidelines to follow.

The “1992 health of the nation strategy” is also a legal document that is directed at bettering the mental and physical wellbeing of the populace. It specifically identified improving on managing and treating brain disorders as part of the five key parts of healthcare needing more attention and developmental focus. It was the document that further highlighted the necessity of involving service users and their families in the planning and evaluation of their care plans.

Furthermore, there was a 1994 review of how mental health nursing activities are being carried out with the highlight being the fact that services users should be involved in their care planning that nurses’ duty is predicated on the type of rapport and engagement they have with clients and users of their services.

Also, the 1998 human rights act which is an improvement on the 1950 European human rights localised the fact that all humans should be treated equally by given them right to life, liberty, freedom of expression and humane treatment coupled with their right to be fairly heard even during trial

2.3 Explain how differences in working practices and policies affect collaborative working.

Policy describes an array of actions, principles and way of doing things that is made by regulatory bodies and government to help guard people and organizations do things in a standard and informed way to achieve their goals. (Najam., 2005) Partnerships and collaborations involving two or more organizations geared towards ensuring that important business needs are well met can produce great or bad outcomes. The beauty of partnerships is that it has the huge potential enhance collaborations and to influence policy and guidelines for improved health and social care but the disadvantage is that when things go bad, it can be used as a tool by warring factions to fight each other. Common policies influenced by partnership working include HSE policies, patient safety and security policies, privacy policies, research policies, medical and medicine policy among others.

The UK wide medicine policy which is implemented in partnership with WHO for example helps to protect service users so that they are not given the wrong type of drug and treatment for their conditions, it actively monitors the production, distribution and supply of drugs so as to maintain cheap access quality and effective medicine in the healthcare environment.

The research strategy focuses on using research to come up with better health workings and systems (working partnership and collaboration included) that will be implemented, monitored and evaluated to further enhance the health sector. These strategies been discovered is regularly shared to help partnerships resolve grey areas contributing to negative outcomes in partnership all in the bid to strengthen the system.

The good thing about partnership working is that it brings enterprise and assiduity that creates a unity of purpose while the bad side is that the differences in race, culture and religion sometimes lead to disagreement which is why there is the need for more clarity transparency in the manner, approach and governance of partnerships to remove barriers and enhance its effectiveness. (Alex Carson., 2002)

3.1 Evaluate possible outcomes of partnership working for users of services, professionals and organisations.

The possible outcomes of working in partnership between health and social care centres, professionals and organizations can either result in good or bad outcomes.

Outcomes of partnership when it is good for service users:

• There is the empowerment of service users, health and social care organizations and the professionals that have collaborated.
• The collaborators are able to make better decisions due to synergy and pulling together of multiple resources and ideas.
• There is also an enhanced level of services when compared to working alone and it ensures that more service users are served quickly and efficiently and there will be little or no service users being unable to access quality service

Outcomes of partnership for service users when it is bad:

• There maybe conflict of interest leading to disappointment, resentment and hurtfulness
• Lack of communication or misunderstanding will worsen.
• Employees and carers will feel more frustrated, not empowered and agitated (Seedhouse., 1998).
• There will be too much information to handle or implement leading to organised chaos
• There may be data misuse, mix up and errors

Outcomes of partnership when it is good for professionals:

• Better and effective communication: There will be efficient and timely exchange of working ideas and communication leading to increased productivity and enhanced care.
• The will be clarity as regards roles and responsibilities.
• There will be more efficient use of resources and ambiguity of ideas and methods of doing things will be uncommon

Outcomes of partnership when it is bad for professionals:

• There will be unnecessary and unhealthy competition
• There will be lack of effective communication
• There will be lack of transparency and accountability leading to the mismanagement of resources and ideas.
• There will be poor execution of ideas and strategies

Outcomes of partnership when it is good for health and social care organizations:

1. There will be standardization of working principles: Even though each organization will still have its own personalised way of doing things, there will be some common themes such as: common goals, streamlined and easier communication, defined roles and responsibilities, streamlined and appraisable parameters for what constitutes as effective care.
2. There will be standardization of working practices: There will be more streamlined approach and common but effective ways of doing things and providing services and care in an efficient and effective manner that meets the needs of service users across partnership organizations leading to better and increased quality service delivery.

Outcomes of partnership when it is bad for health and social care organizations:

1. There will be a disoriented and chaotic way of doing things due to too many suggestions and ideas which will lead to increase cost of care without an improvement in care service delivery.
2. Ineffective communication: There will be complete failure of communication leading to a detach from the core objectives of partner organizations.

3.2 Analyse the potential barriers to partnership working in health and social care services.

There are a number of several potential obstacles to effective health and social care collaborations and partnerships. They include:

1. Barriers due to organizational structure: Health and social care services providers have different ways in which their organizations have been set up in terms of its composition, hierarchy, position and the responsibilities attached to each position which in a lot of times prevent them from collaborating with other related organizations within the industry. When ideas are shared there may not be a qualified person needed to implement the idea due to structure and position issues which altogether defeats one of the main aim of working in partnership and collaboration.
2. Barriers due to different method of doing things: Closely related to structural barriers is that of procedure as organizations have ways of doing things that may be hard to change when they start working in collaboration with other organizations as human beings are sometimes resistant to change especially if these changes need them to completely or significantly alter the ways they do things that they have been accustomed to. (Watt, 2000)
3. Funding barriers: The financial capacities of organizations in health and social care are not the same which is why some partnerships are difficult to work on and implement. This is because some organizations are not privately owned but also small in size and will find it difficult to implement partnerships decisions and structures while some are funded by the government through NHS and have big financial muscle to carry out the intricacies involved with partnerships.
4. Professional and communication barriers: There may be so barriers in terms on organizational policies, communication policies, legal hurdles and confidentiality and non-disclosure polices that may ultimately prevent an organization from partnering with other to improve its services to users. The hurdle may also have to do with the organizational mission and vision goals which is not in tandem with potential partner organizations

3.3 Devise strategies to improve outcomes for partnership working in health and social care services.

There are a number of ways by which negative outcomes can be changed to become positive and to also make positive outcomes better in health and social care.

They include:

Risk assessment: According to (Beauchamp and Childress., 2001) having an enhanced and strategic methods of checking for risks that can and will be effectively implemented to assess and resolve the problems that might arise from working in partnerships so that risks can be prevented before they arise or effectively dealt with if they eventually arise.

Conflict resolution: It is important to have conflict resolution mechanism that will effectively help to resolve potential grey areas.

Putting employees in the current task fitting for their skills: After putting standardised structures in place, it is important to carry out employee awareness programs and to make sure that they are assigned into roles in which they will be able to do their best and work in partnership with like minded colleagues both within and partnerships and the healthcare environment.

Improving on information processing and dissemination

Undertaking the analysis of stakeholders: It is important to carry out stakeholder mapping and analysis of how important the different stakeholders in and around partnerships are in order to satisfy them and keep them informed as the case may be.

Creating new methods of empowering service users: It is the task of partnering healthcare organizations to ensure that members of staff are trained and empowered to do the right thing. Service users across partnerships must also be empowered to contribute to their care plans and in improving on their decision making. (NHS, 2014)

Collective multiple agency collaborations must also encourage the seconding of professionals to partner organizations if need be.

References.

• Beauchamp T. and Childress, J. (2001). Principles of Biomedical Ethics.5^th Edition.  Oxford University Press.
• Balloch, S. and Taylor, M. eds., 2001. Partnership working: policy and practice. Policy Press.
• Douglas, A. (2008). Partnership Working. Routledge.
• NHS Code of Practice Confidentiality [online].  Available at: http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/documents/digitalasset/dh_4069254.pdf. Accessed 01/07/2014
• Greco, V., Sloper, P., Webb, R. and Beecham, J., 2005. An exploration of different models of multi-agency partnerships in key worker services for disabled children: effectiveness and costs. Social Policy Research Unit, University of York.
• Hall, K., Miller, R. and Millar, R., 2016. Public, private or neither? Analysing the publicness of health care social enterprises. Public Management Review, 18(4), pp.539-557.