Discuss the ways in which the physical environment can make a difference to the lives of people who have care needs and those who support them.
Most people with care needs can find the place they live or their community challenging with daily tasks. The physical environment can compound their disability by its design meaning they struggle with their daily life and their wellbeing is affected greatly. The physical environment is a place we experience care, it is a building we live or visit. The social environment is what happens in the home, community, who lives there, works there or provides the care. The psychological environment is a person’s wellbeing, their identity, sense of worth, changes in their life that affects their wellbeing, choices they are able to make and how much control they have over their lives. I will be looking at how a person’s physical environment can make a difference to the lives of people who have care needs and those who support them.
The physical environment in any care setting can affect a person’s wellbeing. By making the environment enabling it allows the person to get on with daily living with little problems allowing them to keep control of their own life and make their own choices. A physical environment that provides this for individuals will make caring for people with disabilities easier as the independence that it will provide is important. By altering an environment for a person’s needs it will help not only with the physical aspect of their lives but also with their psychological wellbeing, not feeling trapped or imprisoned by their disability.
For most people home is considered to be a place they feel most comfortable, safe and secure, for most people with a disability, home can feel like a prison. It isn’t just their disability that is the problem but also their home, the design and layout of their home that can cause most problems, also for those who give support. They may lose sense of independence; they lose...