Maintaining Professional Boundaries in Social Care
Task 1
Care homes are seen as a sanctuary for those who are physically or mentally vulnerable; the care industry operate on serving mankind with providing the best services possible that would benefit the health of its service users. Care workers (social workers) are seen as the medium through which patients are served and treated medically and via verbal therapy. Care workers are often bound to spend long hours with their respective patients, during which they get the opportunity to understand their patient’s health better and bond over this mutual understanding. The problem arises when the care worker blur the line between being professional and friendly, and crossing this line may lead to grave consequences. Because the work that care workers do can involve a lot of emotions, they often find themselves in a situation where they want to go an extra mile and treat their patient with much more responsibility and share their burden. This research paper will be looking into this problem and understanding why it is important to maintain the boundaries with the service user, more than it is in any other industry.
Social workers, especially younger ones, often find themselves in circumstances where their emotional involvement can lead to a patient trying to gain advantage of their situation by asking a lot more of the user and using their vulnerability as a reason to do so. Not only can this put the worker’s employment at stake but it could also hinder with the treatment of the service user. The research will give an in-depth reasoning on why this can affect the culture of the care home by providing examples of where such circumstances have actually occurred and harmed the ones who were involved.
The preliminary aims of this research is to outline specific boundaries, the no-go zones and the appropriate behavior o