Health Policy Assignment: Action Plan for Welfare of Older People
Question
Task: The overall purpose of the health policy assignment is to develop a new policy or update an existing policy, from your workplace or the public domain, which impacts on the potential for older people to engage actively and meaningfully in their community.
An accompanying report is required to support the development to the new or updated policy.
The report should include:
• Consultation with consumers and colleagues to develop the new or updated policy;
• Review of the evidence base focused on guidance for successfully implementing policy in practice;
• Recommendations about how to measure successful implementation of new or updated policy.
Answer
Introduction
This health policy assignment sheds light on the case scenario of old age people who go through a lot of health issues and there are many policies that are there but sometimes the policy is not exactly able to help those (Eggers, 2020). Through this report, a new policy would be discussed which would help the older people to engage meaningfully and actively in their community. In the report, a new policy is discussed which helps the older people would communicate better and mix with other people of their community (UNECE, 2021). It would be discussed why this new policy is useful in the report. The new policy would be set so that the older people participate more in the society. The policy would also make their access to transport, cultural and social activities, housing, and other events appropriate. (Jeon, 2017).
The issue
The older population is one of the most vulnerable populations of society and needs extra care to live a quality life. The rate of the older population is increasing due to aging which is making them weak (Drennan et al., 2018). It is already known that the immunity system of the older individual is weaker as compared to young individuals who make them more vulnerable to physical illness like diabetes, weakness in bones, physical disability, minor illnesses like fever and cough, and others are very common in old age (Sanchez-Rodriguez et al., 2020). The persistence of this disease limits their access to the outside world and makes them socially and mentally vulnerable. They get isolated and started to feel unwanted for this (Bartlett et al., 2019). It has been noted that depression and mental illness is common among older adults and one of the major reason behind it is isolation from family and friends and less restriction.
Concept
The new policy will help to address the above issue that is isolation and limited restriction. This policy will help the integration and participation of older people in society. They can communicate properly with family and friends. This policy will help to enhance their accessibility which not only will help in improving their mental and social wellbeing but will also help in enhancing physical health (Kröger, 2017). This policy will focus on two main strategies that can address social isolation which are, Transportation, volunteering, and social participation. The new policy will be based on the older people for their betterment (Stevens et al., 2019).
Consultation with consumers and colleagues:
New Policy implementation:
The new policy would be set up so that the older people participate in the society and communicate and get together more with the people in their community. The following are three services that are being discussed which would be included in this new policy.
Social participation and volunteer work:
It has been noted that with time social participation of the older individual decreases. The new policy would help them to get acknowledged as an individual and will help them to be more engaged socially by organizing volunteer camps and programs (Chu, 2020). These programs will help them to increase their social networking and will also improve social engagement (Cooper 2018).
Transportation:
As mentioned above, the rate of disability among older people is high as compared to other individuals and they need walking support (Kjellberg, 2020). Due to this issue, they will not be able to visit their family and friends and tend to feel isolated. This policy will provide a separate transportation service to such older individuals. This will pick them from their home and will drop them at their destination. With the help of this service, they cannot only visit their close ones but can also tour wherever they want to.
Consultation with consumers and colleague:
Before formulating the new policy, it is important to consult the services that will be provided by the policy. For proper consultation, healthcare staff working in geriatric wards and older people will be interviewed it will help to analyze the problems faced by older individuals and what according to them are the effective strategies to avoid such. Besides, the effectiveness of the policy mentioned above will also be discussed and whether it is effective as per them or not. Discussion regarding the reasons why this policy would be needed for them? What are the problems that they would not face? Why it is necessary? And things like that will also be discussed (Bartlett et al., 2019).
Implementation
Measurement or evaluation after the policy implementation is necessary to make sure that the policy has been implemented effectively. After the implementation of the policy, it is supposed that there would be a lot of change among the older people will be observed (van Zaalen et al., 2018). As mentioned above, that social isolation impacts mental health, therefore the rate of mental health illness among older individuals will be analyzed and compared with the previous rate. A further survey will be done among the older people to gather their response regarding the policy and whether they are benefitted from the same or not (Suwa et al., 2020).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be stated that social isolation and limited access is a major issue among the older population which makes them mentally and socially vulnerable. The discussion highlights the implementation of a new policy that will help to address the referred two-issue by providing transportation and enhancing social participation and volunteer work. Before formulating the policy, consultation with the consumer which is the older population as well as the colleague will be done where their views regarding the issue and strategies to mitigate the same will be discussed. The discussion above also highlights the recommendation that will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the policy.
References
Bartlett, M., Wang, J., Hay, L., & Pang, G. (2019). Health service use in the older person with complex health needs. Australian Health Review, 43(1), 62-70. https://doi.org/10.1071/AH16286
Chu, Y. (2020). City government’s adoption of housing adaptation policy innovation for older adults: Evidence from China. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbaa207
Cooper, A., Cocker, C., & Briggs, M. (2018). Making safeguarding personal and social work practice with older adults: findings from local-authority survey data in England. British Journal of Social Work, 48(4), 1014-1032. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcy044
Drennan, V., Walters, K., Avgerinou, C., Gardner, B., Goodman, C., Frost, R., ...&Manthorpe, J. (2018). Moving upstream in health promoting policies for older people with early frailty in England? A policy analysis. Journal of health services research & policy, 23(3), 168-175. https://doi.org/10.1177/1355819617752971
Eggers, T., Grages, C., Pfau-Effinger, B., &Och, R. (2020).Re-conceptualising the relationship between de-familialisation and familialisation and the implications for gender equality–the case of long-term care policies for older people. Ageing & Society, 40(4), 869-895. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X18001435
Jeon, Y. H., &Kendig, H. (2017). Care and support for older people. In Ageing in Australia (pp. 239-259).Springer, New York, NY.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6466-6_14
Kjellberg, I., &Szücs, S. (2020). Pursuing collaborative advantage in Swedish care for older people: stakeholders' views on trust.Journal of Integrated Care.https://doi.org/10.1108/JICA-01-2020-0001
Kröger, T., &Bagnato, A. (2017). Care for older people in early twenty-first-century Europe: dimensions and directions of change. In Social services disrupted. Edward Elgar Publishing.https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786432117.00019
Moreira, A., &Barslund, M. (2019).Promoting the Political Inclusion and Participation of Older People: Social, Psychological and Institutional Perspectives.In The Future of Ageing in Europe (pp. 287-307). Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1417-9_10
Sanchez-Rodriguez, D., Annweiler, C., Gillain, S., &Vellas, B. (2020). Implementation of the integrated care of older people (ICOPE) app in primary care: new technologies in geriatric care during quarantine of COVID-19 and beyond. https://doi.org/10.14283/jfa.2020.24 Stevens, M., Moriarty, J., Harris, J., Manthorpe, J., Hussein, S., &Cornes, M. (2019). Social care managers and care workers’ understandings of personalisation in older people’s services.Working with Older People.https://doi.org/10.1108/WWOP-11-2018-0022
Suwa, S., Tsujimura, M., Kodate, N., Donnelly, S., Kitinoja, H., Hallila, J., ...& Yu, W. (2020). Exploring perceptions toward home-care robots for older people in Finland, Ireland, and Japan: A comparative questionnaire study.Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 91, 104178.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.archger.2020.104178 UNECE (2021).Policy Integration and participation of older persons in society. Retrieved from: https://unece.org/DAM/pau/_docs/age/2009/Policy_briefs/4-Policybrief_Participation_Eng.pdf
vanZaalen, Y., McDonnell, M., Miko?ajczyk, B., Buttigieg, S., del Carmen Requena, M., &Holtkamp, F. (2018). Technology implementation in delivery of healthcare to older people: how can the least voiced in society be heard?.Journal of Enabling Technologies.https://doi.org/10.1108/JET-10-2017-0041
Zhou, Y., Li, Y., Zhu, X., & Ma, L. (2021). Medical and Old-Age Care Integration Model and Implementation of the Integrated Care of Older People (ICOPE) in China: Opportunities and Challenges. The journal of nutrition, health & aging, 1-4.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-021-1595-5
