Residential care facilities
- Details
- Hits: 16578
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background
Residential care facilities have lately replaced larger institutions as a focus to enable people live well in the society. Actually, this solves any tussle related to whether to institutionalize the disability care services or provide community services, in the countries that have fully developed policies. This is focused on improving the provision of developmental disability services with a reflection of institutionalization with possible reforms where need be. In as much as the issues of effectiveness of the residential care facilities have been resolved in other countries, many countries people with disability still live with their families thus no focus on developing services that should support them.
Developing residential care facilities in areas that have never had institutional facilities however can be easier. The residential care facilities can be developed without going through the phase of institutional facilities, and ensuring their effectiveness for the services provided. Different regions globally experience different chronic conditions due to mental and physical impairments at unequal rates. Children develop at their own pace, thus it may be difficult to tell when one starts experiencing developmental disability. However, developmental screening can be conducted to help in identifying any delay, which then is followed by tests to ascertain that there is actually a delay in terms of development.
It is reported that about one billion people globally making up a rate of 15% have a form of disability (CDC, 2015). According to CDC (2015), developmental disabilities occur among all ethnic, racial and socioeconomic groups with a projection that about 15% of the children aged between 3 to 17 years have one or more chronic physical or mental impairments in the United States of America (USA). People with developmental disorders equally needs healthcare interventions and programmes for their wellbeing, and this have solicited for the development of the establishment of care centers.
Increase in the prevalence of the conditions is unclear, as controversy surrounds the explanations given about the increase. It is argued that increased diagnosis of the case is as a result of increased awareness and monitoring of children development to identify any abnormality (Gerhardt &Lainer, 2010). The increase has created a large demand for services to those who suffer from such conditions, increasing far beyond the available resources pushing the states and the people affected to find ways of establishing an effective system of care for such individuals. The increased establishment of institutions for care of people with disabilities on the other hand comes because of people feeling that the disabled are unproductive and required specialized care.
The movement from the institutional care delivery system to the community system is intended to ensure acceptance and understanding of people with disabilities within the communities and the societies they exist in. There are major transitions in care delivery systems that the administrations and caregivers offer to the disabled. The service delivery systems gear towards the different needs of those with the developmental disabilities across the lifespan (Gerhardt &Lainer, 2010). People have been embracing the need for people with special needs to learn and actualizing the need for them to be employed as a desirable intervention for them. Much as such programmes are not achieving a lot as desired, the responsible groups keep demanding them.
The services rendered for this course allow individuals within their communities or homes for individuals with similar needs for different services availed. Such services are intended to cost less than it would cost for a similar case in an institution. The standards are also set for such service provisions by the relevant authorities in order to control the services and ensure they focus on the needs of the people. Such regulations and services need to be reviewed to identify if they meet the needs of the people and to if any review is required so that they remain relevant to the needs and capacity (Mansell& Beadle-Brown, 2010).