Assignment: Beeches day centre
In this assignment I will be covering the poor quality of care at the Beeches Drop-in centre.
This is a place that caters for the needs of homeless adults of all ages. Many of the adults who
attend have social issues and generally have health issues also. This can lead to distress in
the centre as some service users live ‘chaotic’ lives and they can often disrupt others in the
centre. Throughout this assignment I will discuss the following 4 themes- duty of care,
safeguarding, health and safety and complaints. Duty of care involves providing top quality
care by ensuing you meet all the needs of the service user and carrying this out to the best of
your ability (Social Care institute for excellence 2012). Safeguarding is important as it secures
adults and children from the risks of abuse and neglect, ensuring adults to live a safe life free
from harm. Health and safety is also an important subject to talk about as it plays an
importance in the wellbeing of the staff, volunteers, visitors, and service users. Without health
and safety rules the welfare of individuals could be threatened. For each theme I will highlight
the concerns and breaches of the UK’s lawful acts that happen daily at the drop-in centre and
introduce ways that they could be improved so the service users are benefited. It is important
that the wellbeing of the service users is always paramount, so improving the day centre will
overall have a positive impact and allow the homeless individuals to come to a place of safety
when attending the drop-in centre.
P1: At Beeches Drop-in centre there are several breaches of duty of care including lack of
organisation, no policies, no procedure, lack of training for staff and no promoting of the
complaints procedure. Duty of care is a legal obligation put in place to ensure the safety and
wellbeing of others (mind tools 2020). It involves taking service users best interests into
consideration and not disregarding their wishes. Breaching duty of care can result in service
users being harmed, abused, and neglected, this could then have a detrimental effect on their
overall health, leading them to deteriorate at a faster rate. At the Beeches Drop- in centre
there is a social worker and a registered nurse who are apparently full time at the centre.
There are also several volunteers who work a variety of hours ranging from two up to five
days a week. This evidently shows the lack of management and leadership in the centre and
the need for a manager to control the activity of the volunteers and the staff to ensure service
users have full access to staff when needed. Furthermore, there is no evidence of training or
Disclosure and Barring Service checks (DBS) with the volunteers, meaning these people who
are among the service users could be dangerous, this is then extremely concerning as
vulnerable adults are roaming around daily. This is then breaching their duty of care as they
are putting service users at risks. Another example of breaching of duty of care at Beeches
Drop-in centre is again the careless quality of care from the staff. It states in the case study
that the full-time staff “occasionally take a register but this is only when they remember”.
This demonstrates that the staff have no records of who may be entering, therefore
neglecting their duty of care as they will not know who to look out for if there is any sort of an
emergency, for example a fire. Beeches Drop-in centre requires organisation and clear
policies are needed for the staff to follow including a plan to make sure the register is taken
every day.
P2: Service users and their families may complain about services and care delivered for a
variety of reasons, a few examples could be the lack of communication with a staff member
and a service user or if they feel the care delivered was of a poor standard. Complaints can
lead to an investigation of why it was made and the circumstances around it. It is important
that complaints are then acted upon to help save lives and improve the overall quality of care
in the setting. The fact there is not a complaints procedure evidently shows the failure of the
caregiver’s duty of care at Beeches. Instead of ‘ The poor care towards service users’ needs
change, if there was a procedure to complain there would be an investigation where close
supervision at the Beeches Drop-in- centre can take place, reviewing if the staff and
volunteers are performing how they should be. There are so many benefits when receiving
complaints, even though it is a negative subject towards the establishment, it is something
that will better the setting in the long run.
