COMMUNITY LEGISLATION

Community care



Community care

Introduction

Community cares are primary services of health, education, or other basic needs of individuals which are not fulfilled by individuals by themselves. This can be due to physical or financial disabilities. , this is then provided by the governmental departments, such as the state health department or at individual level in the forms of nongovernmental organization.

The concept of community care

The principle aim behind community care is to look after somebody, who has difficulty in looking after with his day to day living. It aims to provide services and care to people who either disable, ill or cannot look after themselves. It provides services and care to people without discriminating with their gender and age differences, and most of the services provided by the community care are either at subsidized rates or are free of charge.

Kinds of community care

There are two kinds of cares, which are expected from community care services, the first care associated with community care is social care and the second care is health care.

Social care is commonly known as community care, which aims to provide services such as personal care to individuals, who cannot look after themselves; it also aims to provide respite care and act as a community alarm, which provides help in difficult situations to individuals. Similarly, health care services include medical care related services to individuals either at community health centers or at individual's home (Swayne, 2008, pp 44-47).

A community care can be provided by the governmental departments, such as the state health department or at individual level in the forms of nongovernmental organizations.

Legislative framework and social workers

A legislative framework comprises of set of rules which are enforced by the law enforcing authorities such as the police and the courts. They prohibit several actions through the means of orders and sanctions in the form of prison or death sentences, fines and community related works.

Therefore, social worker's operate within a framework of regulations and legislations relating to rights of individuals and other community services. They are responsible for complying with government policies and regulations made by government particularly in the health and safety domain. Different codes of practices followed in this profession also impose additional responsibilities upon social workers to follow best practices in order to provide supreme quality to the users of community services (Hill, 2009, pp 24-27).

Social workers not just have a legal duty but they, also have a moral and ethical duty of care towards community service users. Noncompliance with the regulatory framework or negligence by social workers and their employees may result in damages payment to the end users for bearing the distress caused by incorrect advices and unprofessional behavior of social workers.

Similarly the regulatory framework also protects the social workers and the employers of community services from being legally responsible to a regulatory action, when conducting certain statutory actions such as safeguarding children and providing community services to old aged individuals (Crowfoot, 1990, pp 45-57).

Social workers not only help individuals in accommodating and properly ...