Working in Partnership in Health and Social Care Essay

Working in Partnership in Health and Social Care - Essay Example Working in healthcare involves undertaking diagnoses, treating and preventing injuries, illnesses and mental impairments in people. These services require the skills of competent professionals; nurses, doctors, psychiatrists and pharmacists. Healthcare may be provided in health facilities or even at home. Working in healthcare usually involves provision of primary, secondary or tertiary care. It may also involve providing healthcare services at home, conducting medical research, formulating health care regulation and administration, financing or improvement of technology used in provision of care to patients such as X-ray machines or CT scans (Norman, 2001). Working in social care on the other hand involves taking measures that will improve the well being and quality of life of an individual or a community. These measures may include intervening whenever there is a crisis, or a social injustice has been meted on individuals that are not empowered enough to fight for their own rights. It also involves research and educating people on their human rights and civil liberties. Research in social care focuses on public administration, counseling, psychotherapy as well as all areas of human development. Most importantly, social care involves organizing communities to work together towards tackling challenges that affect them. Organisations that offer health and social care constitute members drawn from a wide range of professions such as education, medicine, law, philosophy, psychology and theology (Norman, 2001). They also draw members from local, national, regional and inter-continental areas. Effectiveness of Partnership Relationships in Health and Social Care Working in partnership is inevitable in health and social care due to the overlapping nature of some of their roles (Weber, 2001). It helps foster consultation, job sharing and shared ways of working together to solve common problems. However in pursuit of these partnerships, health and social care providers need to clearly identify their roles and responsibilities and how they complement each other so as to avoid conflicts (Weber, 2001). Partnership is essential since it helps in the success of several stages that will ultimately lead to effective service delivery. This section is dedicated to discussing these stages. The first role of partnerships in health and social care is planning. This is the most crucial stage in which health and social care strategies, priorities and objectives are set. Planning is essential since it gives an overall direction of activities that the organisation will have to undertake to meet its goals. The second role of partnerships is shared commissioning and integration of service delivery. Once the need for a service to the people has been established, partnerships come in handy to not only make the commissioning and service delivery swift but also easy. The third role is development of health and Social Care Workforce (Weber, 2001). This is another area i n which partnerships are important. They help in the employment, retention. Another area is monitoring, review and regulation. Partnerships also lend a hand in review of services delivered, inspection of registered facilities such as children’s homes and nursing homes for the elderly and making sure that they conform to the set standards. Partnerships also are effective in lobbying and learning. Research and practice has shown that the challenges facing health and social care delivery can be tackled best through joint and collective learning. This is the final and most crucial effectiveness of partnerships. They enable and encourage the participation of all members of the organisation to deliver services so as to meet the requirements se (Weber,