2. Treating people well
It is well understood that clients and patients
should be treated well by care workers.
An ethical reason for treating people well is that
being a care worker implies having a duty of
care.
A practical reason is that clients who are
treated well tend to behave more cooperatively,
recover more quickly and have fewer problems.
3. Treating people well involves trying to
provide life quality factors, e.g. ensuring
that people have occupation or privacy
It is not always possible to do this, e.g.
drilling a tooth may be painful and
uncomfortable!!
4. It is a good idea to think about the long term
effects of treatment, i.e. that whilst treatment
may be uncomfortable or painful it will mean a
better quality of life eventually.
A care worker should think carefully about the
needs of the client or patient and take whatever
action seems to give the best outcome.
5. Your examples
Discuss how care workers can provide life
quality factors in these care settings:
HospitalA & E department
Day nursery
Residential home for elderly people
You will need to think back to how these
can be lacking in some care situations.
6. Treating people badly
In practice there are many ways in which clients
or patients are sometimes treated badly
Neglect – means ignoring or otherwise failing to
attend to a person’s needs. Physically this may
involve not feeding a person. Psychologically it
may mean not using effective communication or
giving social support.
7. Think of another example of physical and
psychological neglect.
8. Rejection – means showing the client that
the care worker does not accept
responsibility for caring for them
Hostility – means expressing dislike or
aggression towards a client, by verbal or
non-verbal communication or
unsympathetic treatment
9. Can you think of a way that a care worker
could show rejection to a client?
When might a client be hostile towards a
care worker and vice versa?
10. Punishment – means responding to a
client’s unwanted actions with unpleasant
consequences, e.g. sending a patient to
their room if they have disturbed or upset
other residents or sending a child to the
‘naughty’ corner of the playroom.
Punishment is always negative and
inappropriate in care settings
11. Do you agree that there can never be a
time when a care worker is justified in
punishing a client?
Think back to the ethical reason for
treating people well – what is it?
12. Bullying – can take various forms
including physical abuse or intimidation,
e.g. using demeaning language or teasing
a person
Violence – means physically hurting a
client, with or without producing detectable
injury, e.g. a parent smacking a child
13. Which groups of vulnerable people are
most at risk or being bullied by care
workers? (What reports have you heard in
the news?)
Is violence ever ethical?
14. Discrimination
Means acting differently towards certain
people or groups of people.
Not always negative, e.g. a GP has to
discriminate between two patients, treating
them differently according to their illness
Most care workers are able to discriminate
between clients in terms of their
personalities
15. For example, you may speak light-
heartedly to one client who enjoys this and
in a more formal way to a different client
Unfair discrimination involves treating
people differently not because of their
different needs, but because of their
membership of certain groups
16. Types of unfair discrimination
Sex discrimination - means treating
people less well than others because of
their sex.
Discrimination on the grounds of sexuality
means treating people differently because
they are gay, straight, bisexual or asexual
Ethnicity is a difficult concept and refers
to the cultural origins of a person.
17. Ethnicity can refer to a nation, e.g.
Australian, or to a race, e.g. ‘Caucasian’.
It can also refer to a person’s religion
when this is a major part of a particular
culture, e.g. when a person thinks of
himself or herself as a Muslim.
For many people ethnicity is a mixture of
nationality, race and religion.
18. Disability discrimination covers people
who have a physical disability, a mental
illness or emotional, behavioural or
learning difficulty.
Physical disability does not necessarily
mean wheelchair bound but is any
physical condition that prevents a person
from doing something.
19. Social Class discrimination – treating
people unfairly because they come from a
different area – can be from a deprived
area or can be the other way round with
people discriminating against the rich.
20. Age discrimination – treating people
unfairly because of their age might include
not giving older people a job because they
may not stay very long OR – not giving a
younger person a job because they may
be unreliable.
21. Complete the spider diagram with the
correct words for treating people badly.
Remember in this exam you will not gain
marks for explanations without giving the
exact term.