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Throughout my childhood I was always seen as the person who was always willing to help other people, I always put other peoples needs ahead of my own.

The first point in my life that I considered social care was when I helped looking after my two grannies, one had Alzheimer’s and the other had a stroke which left her wheelchair bound and unable to speak.

These were two different types of health conditions and gave me an insight into how people with these conditions cannot live life without someone looking after them. For my granny with Alzheimer’s, I had to ensure she did not leave the house or attempt to cook, to prevent her falling or burning the house down, for my granny that was non-verbal and unable to move, I  helped transport her.

This was really tough at a young age but it was real rewarding knowing I was keeping my grannies alive longer and on some ‘good days’, I could spot things that reminded me of what they used to be like.

“Ultimately, social work aims to support people to live more successfully within their local communities by helping them to find solutions to their problems”(Lawlor and Share, 2013).

Helping my grannies provided me with the interest in social care, I feel a career in social care will be rewarding as it will involve helping lots of people with different disabilities to live a better life, this will involve lots of learning and no day will be the same.

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“The Blind Side” (2009)  is a true story about a homeless African American teenager with learning difficulties called Michael Oher. Michaels father died and his mother was a drug addict this resulted in Michael becoming homeless. Another mother notices Michaels plight and her family take Michael in supporting him through the rest of school, with their support Michael gets a better life and ends up playing in the NFL with a good salary.

“It’s true that we can’t help the circumstances we’re born into and some of us start out in a much tougher place than other people. But just because we started there doesn’t mean we have to end there.” (Michael Oher Quotes (Author of I Beat the Odds), 2020)

This quote summarized Michaels life, I found this to be an inspirational movie as it was based on a true story and relating it to Ireland, there are so many homeless people in Ireland and it just makes me think homeless peoples life's could be improved if they were given the appropriate support.

I’d like to be given the opportunity within social care to help service users to have a better life, similar to how Michael was given the support for better life. Relating this movie to how I would act in social care, I would be like the mother noticing someone’s plight and attempting to give them a more successful life.

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The Blind Side (2009) - Leigh Anne takes Michael Oher Home

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According to (Focus Ireland welcomes drop in September homeless numbers to 8,656 people as the charity calls for the government to broaden the eviction ban to help protect vulnerable renters during COVID-19 - Focus Ireland, 2020) there were over 8500 people homeless, this figure relates to the end of September this year and the number of homeless families has increased over 200% since July 2014.

I found this remarkably interesting as there has been such a focus on the homeless problem in Ireland, but the number of Homeless Irish families has increased such a substantial amount in the past six years.

Looking at potential future trends in Homelessness, I can only see the figures increasing in the short term as its expected there will be less house completions in Ireland due to the lockdown, (Report says output of new homes could fall by 40%, 2020).
combining lack of new houses with the potential for job losses could lead to more homeless. This could lead to more social care resources needed to support the homeless within Ireland, which could impact the type of social care work I get offered.

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During the first couple of days in placement, I was not confident as it was a completely different environment than I was used to. But as placement progressed and my confidence grew immensely, I noticed my skills developing.

Firstly, my communication skills were improved as I had to learn how to communicate with different types of service users including non-verbal service users, as part of communication skills the biggest change was in my listening as I had to actively listen to service users and decipher what they were looking for, some may of said they wanted one thing but they actually needed something else and  listening more allowed me to help the service user.

Secondly I became more self-aware, throughout placement I would evaluate my performance each day and this would involve being critical of some aspects of the working day to see where I could improve, this was a skill that I never really used before and it allowed me to make goals to improve certain parts of how I was doing the job.

Finally I gained broader view of various disabilities, before working in placement I had heard of down syndrome, autism and non-verbal, but I never thought they could impact people in different ways, in placement there was a non-verbal person with coffin-lowry syndrome (CLS). “ (CLS) is a syndromic form of X-linked mental retardation, which is characterized in male patients by psychomotor and growth retardation and various skeletal anomalies”(Marques Pereira et al., 2009).
Placement truly opened my eyes to how many different syndromes there is and the service user with CLS was such a positive person, I’ll always remember what CLS is and going forward my mind wont be a closed minded, I’ll understand that there is various types of disabilities.

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During placement I gained experience dealing with various types of service users, the start was not straight forward as I had no previous interactions with adults with intellectual disabilities.    There was one service user that challenged me the most at the start, he was autistic, non-verbal, wheelchair bound and displayed challenging behavior towards other service users and staff. “By definition challenging behavior challenges the service to determine the unmet needs of the  individual” (McKenzie, McIntyre, Matheson and Murray, 1999)

Overtime I built a professional relationship with this service user and I was able to notice what was triggering the challenging behavior, I started noticing his reactions to certain foods, activities, and television shows. This allowed me to come up with ways of preventing the challenging behavior by ensuring the service user needs were met as much as practically possible, this included ensuring his food was not too hot by delaying him eating for a couple of minutes or ensuring tv programmes that made him challenging were not on while he was in the lounge. If there were incidents where I was unable to prevent his challenging behavior reaching its peak, I would bring him for a short walk and normally by the time we returned to the service he would have calmed down or past the peak of his anger.

Looking back on this example now it may have been my most challenging experience in social care, but it has taught me so much. So if I am ever dealing with a service user with challenging behavior I will know now that there must be unmet needs of the service user and I’ll be able to look for triggers and put a plan in place to reduce the challenging behavior. I will also understand that if a service user becomes challenging that there are different ways to counter this anger like bringing for a walk and allowing the user to calm down.

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Focus Ireland, 2020. Figure 1: Households Accessing Local Authority Managed Emergency Accommodation, June 2014—June 2020. [image] Available at: <https://www.focusireland.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Focus_On_Homelessness_Vol-3.pdf> [Accessed 2 December 2020].

Focus Ireland. 2020. Focus Ireland Welcomes Drop In September Homeless Numbers To 8,656 People As The Charity Calls For The Government To Broaden The Eviction Ban To Help Protect Vulnerable Renters During COVID-19 - Focus Ireland. [online] Available at: <https://www.focusireland.ie/press/focus-ireland-welcomes-drop-in-september-homeless-numbers-to-8656-people-as-the-charity-calls-for-the-government-to-broaden-the-eviction-ban-to-help-protect-vulnerable-renters-during-covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR3bME_knC_Cw8yb3u6YdDszfRbFnMquec5yB2OOIMlLPu5KHGRyF5olaFw> [Accessed 1 December 2020].

Goodreads.com. 2020. Michael Oher Quotes (Author Of I Beat The Odds). [online] Available at: <https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4098524.Michael_Oher> [Accessed 1 December 2020].

Lawlor, K. and Share, P., 2013. Applied Social Care: An Introduction For Students In Ireland. 3rd ed. M.H. Gill & Company U. C.,2013.

Marques Pereira, P., Schneider, A., Pannetier, S., Heron, D. and Hanauer, A., 2009. Coffin–Lowry syndrome. European Journal of Human Genetics, 18(6), pp.627-633.

McKenzie, K., McIntyre, S., Matheson, E. and Murray, G., 1999. Health and Social Care Workers’ Understanding of the Meaning and Management of Challenging Behaviour in Learning Disability Services. Journal of Learning Disabilities for Nursing, Health, and Social Care, 3(2), pp.98-105.

Personal photo,Boyle,R,(2020)

The Blindside. 2009. [DVD] Directed by J. Hancock. USA: Alcon Entertainment.

The Irish Times. 2020. Report Says Output Of New Homes Could Fall By 40%. [online] Available at: <https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/report-says-output-of-new-homes-could-fall-by-40-1.4240292> [Accessed 1 December 2020].

TheRootOfIt, 2020. The Assualt Cycle. [image] Available at: <https://www.rootofit.com/downloads> [Accessed 4 December 2020].

Tzung, L., 2020. Knowing Others Is Intelligence, Knowing Yourself Is True Wisdom,. [image] Available at: <https://quotesgram.com/great-quotes-about-personal-growth/> [Accessed 2 December 2020].