Volunteering work AIHW (Essay Sample)

Volunteering work AIHW
Name
Institution
Course
Date
Table of contents
Introduction 3
Activity being run 4
Social welfare context 5
Structures used 6
Challenges and discrimination 6
Benefits and social change 7
Conclusion 8
References 9
Introduction
Social welfare is a line of activities aimed at one broad objective of providing assistance, help and support people facing life challenges in the aim of improving their lives. Social welfare is the tool for empowering marginalized and disadvantaged groups to have positive control over their lives.
Social welfare work involves both direct and indirect contact with the clients- affected people. Activities involved could range from being as simple as answering a phone call to as complex as helping a woman and her child move into a new residence.
Aged people are one of the most disadvantaged groups in most communities. They face different challenges including loneliness, illness and poverty amongst others. Diseases and illness could be the most outstanding challenge facing aged people. At old age, the body is weak and therefore susceptible to many illnesses. Illness limits the potential of aged people to even undertake basic activities like cooking and cleaning to support their lives. This condition makes them neglected by the community therefore making them a priority for Australian institute of health and welfare.
Australian institute of health and welfare (AIHW) is an Australian government institute established in 1987 to provide statistics of health and welfare and to promote better health and well being for the needy. AIHW is run by a management board that reports to the Australian parliament.
This report covers a welfare activity organized by AIHW for the aged people in Australia.
The Activity Being Run
Using volunteer peers as mentors to facilitate social engagement and participation in activities addressing practical barriers such As communication difficulties, cost and transport facilitating clients’ engagement with friends and with relatives (other than spouse and children) and offering a wide range of activities, which are long term, group based and tailored to specific sections of the older population
Characteristics of social welfare programmes:
1 serve community interests - derived from community need assessment, service design to satisfy such needs;
2 value-based - e.g. human rights, citizen responsibility, social justice, prosperity, stability, equity,....etc.;
3 non-market activities - not directly capital generating, not subject to purely market mechanism/ dynamics (i.e. demand and supply), depends on donation, subsidy, fee charging; [but more recent theories suggest that welfare can also be operated in a ‘mixed market’ mode]
4 accessible to all - citizen right, efficient service delivery system, equal opportunity;
5 accountable to public - effective public and social administration, professional code of practice;
　Effective strategies
• careful understanding and consideration of individual older people’s needs and wishes
• provision of support in ways that enhance autonomy
• taking into account the needs and wishes of carers/ family members
• building on strengths and life achievements, such as past employment, hobbies and interests
• assisting people to identify their own goals
• building of self worth and confidence
• engaging clients in health promotion activities such as those that increase physical activity, improve nutrition and improve mental health
Features of social welfare:
1 organization - delivered through organizations (govt & NGOs);
2 social sponsorship & accountability - service providers answerable to funding sources (govt & donations), to provide quality service;
3 non-profit motive [ though sometimes fee-charging ];
4 functional generalization: - to meet different aspects of society need;
5 direct focus on human consumption (e.g. housing, medical service, etc.)
Social welfare context
The action embraced is look after the aged. This was finished by informal communities. Interpersonal organizations can be characterized by their structure (number of ties, nearness of relationship), by their capacity (recurrence of contact, correspondence, term), and as per the way of the relationship (companions, relatives, youngsters, life partner). These qualities may have critical and particular impacts on the encounters and circumstances of maturing (Zunzunegui et al., 2005).
Structures used
Social network (i.e. methods for empowering more seasoned individuals to make associations with their groups) includes building informal communities, supporting individuals' interest in social exercises, and encouraging social backing and common guide among more established individuals. Some examination proposes that the part of group consideration experts is best satisfied by making a domain that upgrades correspondence, assembles trust and shared regard, and enables customers through delicate correspondence and bolster, help to create mindfulness, and through access to assets and data (Giummarra et al., 2004).
Socialization and social programs that give individualized backing to socially disconnected more seasoned beneficiaries of group consideration administrations can build individuals' sentiments of self-esteem, their trust in social circumstances and in this manner their capacity to re-draw in with the group (Hillier 2007; Lewin & Patterson 2008). Such projects have utilized volunteers as associate guides.
Challenges and discrimination
While undertaking this, there are difficulties and a few types of discrimination confronted. The individuals themselves are modest far from the administrations as they have all the earmarks of being a weight. Other families keep the aged inside and simply deal with them yet are not permitted to go out and associate with other individuals and this has negative effects on their social wellbeing. The aged are basically detached and this adds to their wretchedness. More seasoned individuals have additionally reported sentiments of segregation and hesitance about their handicap as upsetting their cooperation in group exercises (Hillier, 2007). Insufficient social backing is related not just with lower general wellbeing and wellbeing, additionally with larger amounts of enthusiastic pain, more disease and higher death rates (WHO, 2002). There are a higher number of deaths among isolated individuals than among those with systems of connections and enthusiastic backing