Shared Resources

Key Contexts
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Chapter 51

This chapter relates to the context of analyses of decisions and taking decisions in organisations as a whole. This logic has relevance in health and social care, because the author has relocated this thinking by using an illustration from practice. So the other specific context is the health and social care setting.

Part VIII

This part of the book is where we enable you to integrate all of the material covered in previous chapters. We come now to a sequence of three chapters, the first two of which work through illustrations from practice and the third of which relates to residential and day care, which we have selected because they need particular critical scrutiny by practitioners.

All three chapters relate to the wider contexts of policies, laws, theories and practices, as we shall see below.

Chapter 52

This chapter relates to the wider contexts of laws and policies regarding children. It also is set in the context of the literature on work with children and families. Although the immediate context is work with the child and young person, the family should always be, and in these cases is, a relevant context. Even if family members are not present, the family as an ideology (set of beliefs and values) is still present in the mind of a child or young person and this aspect has to be checked out in the process of assessment through to review and evaluation of the work.

Chapter 53

This chapter on health and social care work with adults is set in the wider context of laws, policies, theories, research and practice regarding adults, vulnerable adults, adults’ needs and responding to them.

Chapter 54

In this chapter, we make a concerted effort to tackle residential and day services from the viewpoint of all the learning gained during this book. This means we are better placed than we would have been near the start of the book to take a critical view of residential settings and day care settings in particular. This chapter should be read in conjunction with the Resource File which follows, on theories and models of residential care. The purpose of this is to introduce frameworks to enable us to be critical of these settings. We can also apply this critical thinking to day services.

Part IX

This single chapter in the last part of the book picks up the thread running through chapters 1 and 34, concerning personal and professional development. The wider context concerns adult learning and lifelong learning. There are questions for the reader about what progress has been made and what comes next.

Chapter 55

This chapter relates to the broader context of ideas informing adult learning and lifelong education.

It refers in particular to the work of Paulo Freire in Latin America, which relates in particular to the sociology and psychology of learning and education and to sociological research into inequalities of opportunity and power in society. The significance of his work is that he regarded education not simply as a matter of filling people, like empty vessels, with knowledge, but regarded education as a means of consciousness-raising, enabling people to understand their circumstances and liberate themselves from the bonds of poverty and ignorance which had perpetuated oppression and the powerlessness of previous generations.

We hope that by the time you finish this book you will feel empowered and able to progress to a further course of study, equipped to question ideas, review policy and practice - including your own - critically, using evidence from your learning and experience to continue your professional and personal development.