Consumer Directed Care: Empowering Elderly People

You are required to write a report that analyses the way that consumer directed care empowers and supports older people. Your analysis should include how consumer directed care in aged care can support older people to have more control over they receive. 

Introduction to Empowering Elderly People

Empowering elderly people is a major phenomenon in contemporary health and social care setting which aims to help them to adapt with the certain changes that can arise at the old age. This is the way, through which they can also be able to stay active and thus lead a happy and healthy life. One of the biggest advantages of this is empowerment is that it helps them to accelerate their confidence level which is very much needed in order to cope up with the issues related to cognitive deduction (Roberts & Chapman, 2017).). Empowering elderly people plays a significant role in helping them to be connected with each other. Consumer directed care is one of the most significant service delivery model which has been designed especially to maintain flexibility while dealing with service users. Present paper intends to analyse the consumer directed care and its role in empowering elderly people. Both the positive and negative factors of the consumer directed care.    

Consumer Directed Care is a service delivery model which is being used especially in the aged care sector in terms of providing the students with better care. This model is being executed globally to provide long term support and service to the elderly people. The fundamental aim of the model is to serve the customers with best support and care in accordance with their requirements (Consumer Direct Care Network., 2018). Home Care Package is one of the most significant initiatives of consumer directed care for the sake of enabling the people to have better control over their own care.  The basic principles of consumer directed care include:

• Providing the service users with better care and flexibility
• Supporting the patients with all the valuable information which is highly significant to design the care plan for patients
• Implementation of partnership approach which helps the patients to participate with their service providers
• Maintaining higher rate of transparency with the service users (Sánchez-Valle, Abad, & Llorente- Barroso, 2017).

CDC is basically one of the most significant approach which paves the way of making effective planning to care. This is systemic way, through which the care givers can provide high quality of treatment and care to the people as required by them. Kaambwa et al., (2015) commented that one of the biggest aspects of CDC is that it allows the consumers to access higher degree of choices in the health and social care services.

The working professionals of CDC are much committed towards maintaining healthy interaction with them to explore their fundamental requirements and thus furnish the care plan accordingly. Under CDC, greater transparency is also being maintained with the customers while discussing about the funding of treatment. Formal assessment and ongoing monitoring are valuable aspects of CDC which helps to measure the pertinence of treatment as per patient’s requirement (Laver et al., 2018).  

What is Consumer Directed Care?

Consumer Directed Care offers the people which with a wide range of choices, so that they can be able to control their own life. As the health and social care industry is highly competitive, CDC is highly committed towards integrating innovation which is the key of strengthening the public image (Gill et al., 2017). Subsequent discussion will help to analyse the positive and negative factors related to consumer-directed care.

• Maintaining healthy communication with the customers is one of the major aspects of CDC. They offer the aged people with a greater choices so that they can choose the best treatment for them. With the assistance of CDC, the patients can have more control in their way of life.
• For the case of community aged care, CDC allows the customers to choose their funding. Thus, it can be said that the consumers can control their own budget of treatment as per their financial condition (Gill et al., 2018). CDC is helping the entire community to be more aware regarding the treatment options available to them.
• Skilful and proficient aged care providers are also being served by CDC in terms of providing high quality of care to the elderly people and thus promote health and well-being of them.
• Being transparent in terms of cost and nature of treatment is a crucial aspect of CDC which supports them to keep the patients loyal and satisfied.    

There are certain negative factors, which hampers the internal operation of CDC.

• Liability is the biggest issue in the consumer directed. It is true that the trend of hiring service providers personally is rapidly increasing. Still, lack of ample nursing practices is one of the biggest challenges, being encountered by CDC. This is affecting their ability to maintain the quality of treatment.

According to Laragy & Allen (2015) healthy communication in between service users and service providers plays a significant role in the way of providing high quality of services. Such healthy interaction among them helps to maintain transparency which is the key of incorporating the patients in decision making process. There are certain principles, followed by CDC in order to empower the elderly people. The principles are as follows:

• Choice and control:

As there are certain changes, perceived by elderly people in the course of their life, it is important to give them with certain choices. There lies the significance of CDC as they empower the elderly people by providing them with greater choice and control. The working professionals in health and social care sector show very much supportive attitude towards the requirements of the patients (Heller, Gibbons & Fisher, 2015). They provide necessary assistance to the patients in order to access valuable information and thereby help them to choose the best treatment as per their health condition.

• Balanced partnership and respectful attitude:

Strong connection in between patients and care workers is highly required to strengthen the emotional connectivity. CDC always intends to develop balanced partnership with the patients by showing them respectful attitude. In the setting of consumer directed care, it is the responsibility of care providers to allow the customers to have control over their own treatment and medications. The patients can avail the opportunity to work directly with the health care provider and thus take part in the implementation of CDC approach.

• Greater participation:

In the health and social care setting, community participation is very much significant in order to integrate public view in the care planning. CDC has taken major initiatives such as community development strategy, stable financial in order to remove the barriers in the community and thus allow the elderly people to be involved in the health and social care setting. However, there are certain confusing situation that can arise within aged care setting (McCaffrey et al., 2015). In order to cope up with the situation, the provision of service strategy has been initiated by CDC. This strategy is helping them to frame best care plan as per the individual circumstances.   

• Transparency:

Principles of Consumer Directed Care

In the consumer directed care, the elderly people enjoy the right to evaluate multiple budget before purchasing the best treatment for them. In order to initiate informed decision making process, the health and social care practitioners allows the aged people to access necessary monetary information such as cost of treatment, break-up of the budget.

• Re-ablement:

This is another vital aspect of CDC. They offer the patients with a strong and restorative framework in order to help the elderly people to be independent and thus reduce their constant need of service delivery. This is the way, through which mental support is also being provided to the patients which is the key of promoting mental well-being among them (Wager, Lee & Glaser, 2017).

Continuum Care is one of the major and approved homecare provider which intends to provide high quality of service to the elderly people. The main focus of them is to serve short term care to those person who are self-funded. With the assistance of continuum of care, the elderly people can enjoy effective home care in affordable price. The services provided by continuum of care, serves the patients with a series of choice and thereby control their way of life. They are extremely focused towards designing the services as per the requirements of patients (Continuum Care. 2018). Freedom of choice, promoting independence and maintaining health and well-being of the elderly people are some of the leading aspects of continuum of care.     

Conclusion:

From the above discussion, it can be said that consumer directed care is extremely proficient towards providing high quality of service to the patients according to their requirement. They design their services in such a manner which can enable the elderly people to choose treatment and medication by their own. Maintaining flexibility and transparency while dealing with the patients is the fundamental focal point of consumer directed care. Additionally, they also provides the patients with the right to avail all the valuable information before choosing the best treatment for them. Continuum of care is a major home care service providers who always intends to provide effective care and services to the self-funded service users and thus promoting health and well-being of them.  

References

Consumer Direct Care Network. (2018). About - Consumer Direct Care Network. [online] Available at: https://consumerdirectcare.com/about/ [Accessed 7 Aug. 2018].

Continuum Care. (2018). Home Care Support by Continuum Care | Aged Care | Disability Care. [online] Available at: https://continuumcare.com.au/ [Accessed 8 Aug. 2018].

Gill, L., Bradley, S. L., Cameron, I. D., & Ratcliffe, J. (2018). How do clients in Australia experience Consumer Directed Care?. BMC geriatrics, 18(1), 148.

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Heller, T., Gibbons, H. M., & Fisher, D. (2015). Caregiving and family support interventions: Crossing networks of aging and developmental disabilities. Intellectual and developmental disabilities, 53(5), 329-345.

Kaambwa, B., Lancsar, E., McCaffrey, N., Chen, G., Gill, L., Cameron, I. D., ... & Ratcliffe, J. (2015). Investigating consumers' and informal carers' views and preferences for consumer directed care: A discrete choice experiment. Social Science & Medicine, 140, 81-94.

Laragy, C., & Allen, J. (2015). Community aged care case managers transitioning to consumer directed care: More than procedural change required. Australian Social Work, 68(2), 212-227.

Laver, K., Gnanamanickam, E., Whitehead, C., Kurrle, S., Corlis, M., Ratcliffe, J., ... & Crotty, M. (2018). Introducing consumer directed care in residential care settings for older people in Australia: views of a citizens’ jury. Journal of health services research & policy, 13(5), 55-81.

McCaffrey, N., Gill, L., Kaambwa, B., Cameron, I. D., Patterson, J., Crotty, M., & Ratcliffe, J. (2015). Important features of home?based support services for older A ustralians and their informal carers. Health & Social Care in the Community, 23(6), 654-664.

Roberts, K., & Chapman, T. (2017). Realising participation: elderly people as active users of health and social care. Routledge.

Sánchez-Valle, M., Abad, M. V., & Llorente-Barroso, C. (2017). Empowering the Elderly and Promoting Active Ageing Through the Internet: The Benefit of e-inclusion Programmes. In Safe at Home with Assistive Technology (pp. 95-108). Springer, Cham.

Wager, K. A., Lee, F. W., & Glaser, J. P. (2017). Health care information systems: a practical approach for health care management. John Wiley & Sons.