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.

 “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.

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.

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.