PARTNERSHIP IN SOCIAL & HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS

Working in Partnership in Social & health care Systems in UK - Assignment

Working in Partnership in Social & health care Systems in UK

Section 01

1.0 Partnership - Definition & Philosophy

The term “partnership” is defined in various ways by several authors and researchers. The denotative meaning of the term partnership is “equal commitment” or “the state of being partner” as given in the Collins English Dictionary, 1991 (Carson & Buchanan, 2008, pp. 3-19). Oxford Dictionary (1992) describes the partnership as “a person sharing or taking part with other, especially in a business firm with shared risks and profits”. The sense of sharing and agreement can be perceived and is evident from its denotative meanings. The term “partnership” in the social & health care context changes as quickly as policy because of the linkage between the policy and definition of the term. Thus, the recent accepted and acknowledged definition of the partnership by various highly renowned professionals is given by Princeton University i.e. as a relationship that is cooperative, developed among people or groups that tend to achieve some specific goal through responsibility sharing (Accessed from: http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=partnership).

The era we live in is known as the post-modern world (Carter, 1998). In philosophical terms, post-modernism is often considered as a criticism upon those old forms of social health and welfare where organizations were based on the notion of “one size fits all” policy. Researchers such as Lyotard (1992) and many others have investigated on the phenomenon of the schemes and 'grand narratives' and have concluded that they have failed in delivering the help that they intended to provide. Illustrations, such as those of poverty and poor housing conditions are used to illustrate his point of view i.e. the aforementioned problems have been aggressively grown over the last 5 decades rather being diminished. And in lieu of such aggravation, a twist in the social phenomenon has taken place i.e. creating and helping the system rather helping the individual (poor). Terms like “nanny state” or “disabling state” were used by the critiques of large scale in the era of 1980s in the Great Britain, when the systems & professionals were witnessed as disempowered in the provision of services to clients and receivers. As a result of such criticism, a great emphasis has been placed upon the choice of consumer in such regard. Consumer has been empowered to participate towards the augmentation of the provision of services and design in the services in social & health care. Increasing complexities and multidimensional problems in the social & health care industry has lead towards to the aspect i.e. focusing on the services and systems as an active consumer. Static older models are not comprehensive and have been obsolete over the passage of time. The segregation of the problem dealing authorities such as health issues were dealt by Department of Health whilst social issues were dealt by social services department in the past has placed a need to be ...