Case Study On Interventions For Reducing Social Isolation And Loneliness In Older Adults: Essay.

Care interventions include: Making Safeguarding Personal, Advocacy, Positive risk taking and Adult Family Group conferences.

• Describe the care intervention/s you have chosen, and then apply the care interventions to the case study.
• Justify your reasons for using the interventions e.g. the Care Act 2014 and the priorities and guidelines attached to the Care Act 2014.
• Ensure you consider the requirement of the Care Act 2014 for safeguarding care interventions to be user led.
• The care intervention is an example of using best practice, it is how you should be working with a user led approach, outline the problems that maybe encountered by professionals when they work in this way, include any valid criticisms of these interventions.

According to Preston (2012) using a financial advocate is often the most successful response to this kind of scam, however there is a shortage of trained advocates, locating independent advocates who have the time available to work sensitively with people, over an extended period, is difficult in many local authorities. Beresford’s research on advocacy in London shows only 1 in 7 adults at risk of abuse, who requested an advocate, were provided with an advocate within 6 months of the request being made (Beresford 2016). (Do not use this example in your essay).

• The quality of the review of these two interventions is really important, ensure you use references and write in paragraphs, one paragraph for each point.

Adverse health effects of social isolation and loneliness

 Social isolation and loneliness are one of the major area of concern in UK and it is mainly seen among the older age people of UK.  Social isolation refers to the lack of social support or contact and on the other hand the loneliness is the feeling of being isolated or being alone. With growing percentage of loneliness and isolation, it is also seen that, there are various adverse health effect due to the isolation and loneliness. Among them, depression, general health condition, quality of life are very important health issues (Courtin & Knapp 2015). In this case study of Clara, it is seen that, after death of her husband, she became isolated from the society totally and start to become lonely. In order to avoid loneliness, she had started to engage herself in competition letters. According to this letters, she had won lottery and to claim her winnings she had to pay in advance fees. After that, she started to play more competitions regularly and to give more money to the scammer. It is another problem for the lonely people to be the game of the scammers. According to a report of BBC News, it is seen that almost 230,630 cases of fraud were reported in 2015 ( up to end of march) ( Douglas 2015). Clara was also a victim of monitory fraud and spent a huge amount of money. Even she had no money to buy her food. She had complained to the health care worker that to distract her mind from her husband’s death, she had done all this. Although she had full mental capacity, but she still did not believe that she was fooled by the scammers. During this time, she had already played almost 15 competitions and all the times she was fooled by the scammer. Due to those scams she had lost all her money. In this essay, care interventions that can be used for Clara are discussed. Along with this, the legislation acts to protect Clara is highlighted.

In order to support Clara, there should be two type of interventions. The first one is for giving support related to the monitory frauds that she had experienced and the second one is for helping her to come out from the loneliness and social isolations. Firstly, from the case study, it was seen that, due to her husband’s death Clara started to feel lonely and she started to isolate herself from the society.  Due to this social isolation, she had become a game of the scammers. In order to engage herself to any kind of work she had started playing those fraud games. Even after getting no prize after paying money, she did not stop playing. Moreover she started to play more games in order to win more amount of prizes. Even she failed to realize the fact that she was trapped by the scammers in spite of having full mental stability. She had lost all her money and she even did not have any money to buy her food as she had played 15 competitions simultaneously. In case of all the competitions results were same.  Even After the health care worker and trading standard worker had informed her about the scam, she did not want to believe this truth as the playing was her weapon to negate loneliness. She did not even want to lose the way in which she was trying to forget the grievances of her husband’s death. So it can be said that the primary concern for Clara was to abolish her isolation from the society and loneliness. In order to do this, various method can be used. Firstly, the social interactions should be increased so that she would not feel lonely anymore. Enhancement of the social facilitation will help Clara to interact with the peers or other people who are also lonely. In this type of practice, there is reciprocal benefit to the people who are participating in this process (Gardiner, Geldenhuys and Gott 2018). In order to achieve this, Clara may be encouraged to participate in group activities rather than lottery competitions.  Clara may enroll herself in any charity funded friendship clubs or in a group in which the members shared a common interests with Clara. As a part of group activity, if Clara participate in such things, it will be very much helpful for Clara as she would be in touch with other and also can interchange her thoughts with each other. This may help Clara to get rid of her loneliness. As she started to lose her consciousness, she might need a psychological therapy. In spite of having complete mindfulness she failed to recognize the monetary fraud. This suggested that, there was lack of consciousness and it should be addressed as soon as possible because this was in primary stage of the mental disorder.  By using humor therapy, stress reduction therapy, mindfulness therapy, it would be possible to assist Clara in reduction of her loneliness (Gardiner, Geldenhuys and Gott 2018). In addition, it was seen that, the health care worker also reported that, Clara lost her weight. The reason behind this may be that, due to loneliness she had lost her desire to eat. Along with this, she had not enough money to buy food as she lost all her money in lottery gaming. So she needed the support of the health care professionals in order to improve the condition of her own health. As she was careless about her own health, she must be given care in community setting or in a nursing home. Along with this, the Clara may be enrolled formal program of care as well.  According to a study of Nicholson and Shellman (2013), it was seen that, they introduced the program named CARELINK program that was a community-university partnership in which the nursing students went to visit the older people to assist them in socialization.  From this study, it was seen that, the patients who were enrolled in the CARELINK program, had showed better result in terms of social isolation than that of the people who had not received enrollment under this program. It was seen that, the patients receiving the care had 12 times better result than the patient without that care plan. As Clara was feeling lonely in her house, she might be encouraged to having a pet and that will help Clara to get attached with that pet. Attachment with the pet will help to reduce the loneliness of Clara. From the case study it was seen that, Clara confessed to the health care professionals that, he played the lottery games as she no work to do in her house and she thought that playing lottery was an engagement to her and also it helped to distract her mind from the incident of her husband’s death.  So that it can be said that, should be engaged in some work so that she had something to do and as well as  this work engagement will also help her to forget the bad incident of her life.   As a part of skill development program for Clara, gardening program, internet use can be recommended. There was evidence that support that the skill development program like internet use, gardening had positively affected to reduce the loneliness and social isolation (Gardiner, Geldenhuys and Gott 2018). In a study conducted by Heo et al. (2015) showed that, internet use had a positive impact on reducing loneliness. In their study, the sample size was 5203 and the result showed a direct relationship in between the internet use and reduction in loneliness.  In another study conducted by Toepoel (2013), showed that, in case of reducing the loneliness leisure activities were very much effective. From their study result it was seen that leisure activities was successful in increasing social connections. However  they also mentioned that listening radio, watching tv were not capable of increasing the social connectedness while voluntary work, cultural activities reading a book were very much effective in case of enhancing the social connection. In case of Clara, these can be followed as she was suffering from the problem of social isolation and loneliness and due to this problem she was trapped by the scammers. Even she had also received phone calls from the scammers and they even tried to snatch information about fixed assets of Clara such as Clara’s house. So it was very much important for Clara to rescue her from this condition.

Care interventions for addressing social isolation and loneliness in older adults

 As Clara was already trapped by the scammers, it was very much important that she should be given safeguarding and as well as legislative support as she was a victim of financial fraud. As a part of the financial fraud Clara had sent money to scammers as she was told to deposit money in order to release her lottery prize. This process was continued for several time and Clara continuously became the victim of this monetary fraud. As a consequence of this financial abuse she had extreme level of stress, depression, unwillingness for working (Davidson, Rossall and Hart  2015). So it was very important to provide legislative support to Clara.  In UK, to protect the older, lonely and socially isolated people there are various act such as Fraud Act 2006, Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, The Court of Protection, The Mental Capacity Act 2005, and The Care Act 2014. The Fraud Act 2006 covered a wide range of fraud cases and it can be used in case of financial fraud cases also. In the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, it is the major concern of this act to restrict ineligible people from working with the vulnerable people such as older age population by using these safeguarding acts . In addition, this act also can be referred in case of financial fraud cases. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 protects the people who lack capacity in terms of protection of their financial affairs (Davidson, Rossall and Hart 2015). The Care Act 2014 is the most useful act to protect the lonely people as this act sets a safeguarding for the adult people. According to this act, there should be safeguarding Adults Board operated by the local authority and this board will protect and help to those people who need support and care. Along with this they will also help the people who are at risk of abuse or already have abused by scammers of a particular area (GOV.UK, 2018).   Financial abuse such as fraud, financial transaction, exploitation are covered under the act named The Care Act 2014. The section 42 (3) of the Care Act (2014) says that financial abuse can be included under “Abuse” and the “financial abuse” comprises several activities such as stealing of money or other property, misuse of property or money, being defrauded. This act will be very much helpful for Clara as she had lost a huge amount of money as she played lottery games and to get the prizes she was forced to deposit fees. In addition, the associated statutory Care Act guidance (Care Act Guidance 14:17) also supports the financial fraud by way of supporting the financial transaction, internet scamming fraud and also theft (GOV.UK, 2018). According to the Care Act (2014), the safeguarding duties will be applied to those who has already experienced or at risk of abuse, who has no one or any local authority to take care for them  (Davidson, Rossall and Hart  2015). It was seen that, the percentage of loneliness had decreased after the introduction of the Care Act 2014 and it was quite evident that, due to this act the condition had improved for the lonely people. Along with this, it was also important to enhance awareness among the lonely people about the frauds and financial abuses so that they can be aware of the condition (Scie.org.uk, 2018). As a part of this program they should be given knowledge about spam emails, fraud calls. Local authorities can also show them some scam pictures so that it would be easy for the socially isolated people to identify the fake one. They should also be given information related to fake lottery winning. This step was very much important for Clara as she was trapped by fraud messages that was related to lottery winning.  Along with this, it should be advised to Clara that she should not respond to any kind of phone calls that asked her about the assets and also asked her to deposit any kind of money. Moreover, she should be advised that whenever she would receive any kind of such phone calls or such kind of messages, she should immediately report to the local authority (Fenge 2016). However there are several hindrances that might be faced by the health care professionals during the implementations of the interventions.  According to the case study, it was seen that she did not want to believe the health care workers as well as the trading standard worker. So it can be said that during their work, the health care workers definitely face the trust issue. Not only this, it will be very difficult to train Clara in various skillful activities of daily life as she had lost the willingness of work due to her social isolation and loneliness. In addition, Clara had less cognitive power and this would act as a big barrier in way of learning any new activity of daily life. Clara was not familiar with internet and it was see that use of internet was very much effective in reducing loneliness (Hemingway and Jack 2013). So it would be another challenge to make familiar Clara with the internet.  Although, Clara had full mental capacity, she was not aware about the reality that she was trapped. The health care professionals would face difficulty when they try to tell Clara that she was not well mentally and physically. Clara might not agree to start her treatment. In addition, she had no money to continue her treatment and she had no money to buy food as well. The financial challenge would be a major problem for the health care professionals when working with Clara. In addition it was not possible for Clara to earn money as she had lost all her motivation to do any kind of work. That was the reason for Clara to play the lottery games and lost all her money. She thought that, the completions was the only thing that she could do that time. After, losing a lot of money she did not even   realize that, she should stop this lottery gaming. This proved that, she was not completely mentally stable. So there was actual need for Clara to have treatment for her current condition and as well as she needed care and support.

Lastly it can be concluded that, the condition of Clara was very much sensitive and it should be handled in a very sophisticated manner as she had no financial support and as well as no mental support. Along with this, she was social isolated totally and this led her towards serious depression. However, it was in very initial stage and with proper care and interventions the problems of loneliness and social isolation can be solved. In addition, Clara also needed legislative support as she was economically betrayed.

References

Courtin, E. and Knapp, M., 2017. Social isolation, loneliness and health in old age: a scoping review. Health & social care in the community, 25(3), pp.799-812.

Davidson, S., Rossall, P. and Hart, S., 2015. Financial abuse evidence review. Age UK Research. Available from.

Douglas, J., 2015. Loneliness and the risk of scam mail.  BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34383854 [Accessed 25 Nov. 2018].

 Fenge, L., 2016. Safeguarding-Vulnerable-Adults-from-Financial-Scamming.pdf Ncpqsw.com. Available at: https://www.ncpqsw.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ [Accessed 25 Nov. 2018]..

Gardiner, C., Geldenhuys, G. and Gott, M., 2018. Interventions to reduce social isolation and loneliness among older people: an integrative review. Health & social care in the community, 26(2), pp.147-157.

GOV.UK., 2018. Care and support statutory guidance. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/care-act-statutory-guidance/care-and-support-statutory-guidance [Accessed 25 Nov. 2018].

Hemingway, A. and Jack, E., 2013. Reducing social isolation and promoting well being in older people. Quality in ageing and older adults, 14(1), pp.25-35.

Heo, J., Chun, S., Lee, S., Lee, K.H. and Kim, J., 2015. Internet use and well-being in older adults. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 18(5), pp.268-272.

Nicholson, N.R. and Shellman, J., 2013. Decreasing social isolation in older adults: effects of an empowerment intervention offered through the CARELINK program. Research in gerontological nursing.

Scie.org.uk., 2018. The Care Act: Safeguarding adults.  Available at: https://www.scie.org.uk/care-act-2014/safeguarding-adults/ [Accessed 25 Nov. 2018]. 

Toepoel, V., 2013. Ageing, leisure, and social connectedness: how could leisure help reduce social isolation of older people?. Social indicators research, 113(1), pp.355-372.