Health & social care in the community
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Health Soc Care Community · Jul 2011
The impact of organisational culture on the delivery of person-centred care in services providing respite care and short breaks for people with dementia.
Ensuring the development and delivery of person-centred care in services providing respite care and short breaks for people with dementia and their carers has a number of challenges for health and social service providers. This article explores the role of organisational culture in barriers and facilitators to person-centred dementia care. As part of a mixed-methods study of respite care and short breaks for people with dementia and their carers, 49 telephone semi-structured interviews, two focus groups (N= 16) and five face-to-face in-depth interviews involving front-line staff and operational and strategic managers were completed in 2006-2007. ⋯ Person-centred dementia care is strongly advocated by professional opinion leaders and is prescribed in policy documents. This analysis suggests that person-centred dementia care is not strongly embedded in the organisational cultures of all local providers of respite-care and short-break services. Provider organisations should be encouraged further to develop a shared culture at all levels of the organisation to ensure person-centred dementia care.
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Health Soc Care Community · Jul 2011
An interpretative phenomenological analysis of African Caribbean women's experiences and management of emotional distress.
African Caribbean women are under-represented within mental health services in the United Kingdom, despite sociocontextual vulnerabilities which may increase emotional distress. This qualitative study aimed to explore individual explanatory models of experiences of distress, coping and help-seeking choices, with a view to improving cultural relevance of services. Participants were recruited following their self-referral to self-help community wellbeing workshops. ⋯ This complexity may be conceptualised as an 'exploratory map' where individuals make links between their current and newly encountered knowledge and experience to guide their personal route to coping and help-seeking. The study provides support for tailoring services to individual needs using a flexible approach which empowers individuals from black and minority ethnic groups by valuing explanatory models of distress alternative to the westernised medical model. Furthermore, findings emphasise the importance of readily available and accessible information about statutory and non-statutory community resources which use language relevant to the communities they are aimed at engaging.