Social Determinants of Health



Service Learning ProposalWhitney AyersFerris State UniversityAbstractService learning gives students the opportunity to volunteer for a company of their choice in order to gain knowledge and understanding in the field they have chosen. The service learning agency that I have chosen to work with is an In-home healthcare company that specializes in working with special needs clients. I have put together a program that will help them to learn every day skills that can stick with them throughout their lives. I think the program I have developed will not only help the clients themselves, but also the primary care giver of the individual. We will be teaching them how to prepare and make breakfast from start to finish. This will give the primary care giver a chance to relax and not worry about the stress of taking care of the individual. This is important because everyone needs a break and the amount of work it takes to take care of one of these individuals is overwhelming. This program will not only benefit me, but the special needs clients and the families as well. Service Learning ProposalAs future nurses we are going to be providing services to the people of our community every day, this is why it is so important for nurses to be passionate about helping people and having skills to communicate and appreciate people from all walks of life. Service learning is starting to become more popular on many college campuses. The thought behind this is to not only educate students so they can get a career after graduation, but to educate them on life as responsible citizens. These things can bring a community together and strengthen it by addressing educational and health needs, and contributing to the cultural life of the community (Bringle & Hatcher, 1996). The service learning project that is going to be completed throughout the course of this program gives us the opportunity to give something back to our community and also learn from it as well. The purpose of this paper is to describe what I am planning on participating in for my service learning project. I have a huge passion for kids and I love to see the innocents and joy they bring to people’s lives. They have no shame and will tell it how it is, and I admire that about them. I have had the opportunity to work with special needs children and adults for the past two years, and have found that I have a strong desire to incorporate this field within my future nursing career. I never thought that I would enjoy working with special needs individuals and really only took the job because I needed extra money, but my thoughts were quickly changed. Even after my first day I left with the feeling that I had made a difference, even if no one else saw it. These kids are so incredible and continue to amaze me every day. For my service learning project I have chosen to work with a company that specializes in In-home health care of special needs kids and adults. This company also provides respite care for the families of special needs individuals. Everyone needs to have a break from the demands of taking care of someone with special needs. As amazing as they are, most of these individuals require a great deal of their needs to be provided to them by someone else. This is a huge time commitment and everyone needs to have some time for themselves, so respite care gives them that. The role of this company is to not only provide a service to the children or adults with special need, but to provide the entire family with the support they may need to meet the needs of their special needs individual. Respite care can give families a break to go on vacation, go grocery shopping, and take a few hours to relax, or spend time with a sibling of a special needs child. These are all so important because of the unbelievable commitment it takes to provide for someone with special needs. One thing that I have learned from working with these individuals is that things that people take for granted everyday are so much harder when you’re dealing with a special needs individual. Something as simple as jumping in your car a running to the grocery store can take three or four times as long when dealing with someone with special needs. All of the pertinent information regarding this company can be found on appendix A (House of Angels In-home Health Care Services Inc., n.d.).For my volunteer hours I will be working hands on with some of the special needs clients. Another classmate and I have put together a program that we will be implementing during our volunteer hours. The program is called Breakfast Buddies and it is going to be all about teaching them how to prepare their favorite breakfast from start to finish, working with a budget. First they will have to learn how to make a menu and pick out their favorite things. They will make a list of everything they will need, and decide what they already have and what they will need to get from the store. At the store they will need to find where each product is and decide what the best deals are in order to stay within a certain budget. Then they will have to determine the proper money to give to the cashier, which is a big challenge for most of them. After the food is purchased they will be coached on how to prepare the breakfast meal they have chosen, being sure they are using safe methods. They will get to make the meal for themselves and their family. After they get to enjoy the meal they have prepared they will have to gather all the dishes and clean up any mess they made with instruction and guidance. I think that this program will bring a sense of accomplishment to these individuals who are used to getting everything done for them. It will make them so happy to know that they did something new and made their family proud. We plan on doing this program one at a time in order to be able to give them the proper guidance they need and to make sure that all the attention is on them while they learn a living skill they have never had to overcome. We plan on doing this for six individuals at five hours a piece in order to fulfill our thirty hours of service learning. What I hope to learn from this program is how different people learn in different ways. As a future nurse it will be a huge part of my job to teach patients about their health and how to do things to improve their health. I know not everyone learns in different ways and I think this will really help me to develop skills to teach in the way the client learns best. I will benefit from this program by learning how to have the patients it take in order to teach a special needs individual how to do something that they have never done before. I will also benefit by knowing that I am teaching them a living skill that may help them and even their family. I know this program will have its ups and downs but just knowing the joy it will bring these individuals to accomplish something they have never done and maybe never thought they could do, will be worth any hardships. The community will benefit from this project because these individuals will be learning skills that can’t be taken away from them. This program could motivate them to want to do more things on their own which could eliminate some of the duties of the primary care giver. This will also give them confidence in knowing what they are capable of. Most people assume that these people can’t do anything from themselves and that they are incapable of doing anything. I know that I had these thoughts going into this job, but it is the furthest thing from the truth. When you look at a child and assume they are completely helpless and then they get up and walk right in front of you, it is pretty mind-blowing. I have learned so much from these individual and know I will continue to learn from them throughout this program. There is a huge community of special needs children as well as adults and I think that the program we have created could continue beyond this service learning project alone. I have talked in length about the activities I am planning on doing with these individuals, but this will put the whole picture together. In making the menu the client will have to choose what they want to make, which can be a challenge because they might want ten different things. So choosing just one meal will be part of the decision making process. Then they will have to write down everything they will need in order to prepare the meal they picked. This is where spelling and hand writing will challenge them. They will then have to figure out what they already have and cross it off of the list. At the store they will need to find all the items on their list and compare prices to find the best deal. At the check-out they will have to decide what money to give the cashier in order to pay for their purchases. When preparing their meal we will be teaching them about safety and the proper techniques to make their meal of choice. They will then be serving their family with the finished product at a table that they set up. Here we will teach them the proper way to set silverware and how to present the food in an appealing way. After they are done eating they will have to clear the table and wash all the dishes they dirtied and put them away. Of course we will be helping them at every step in this process, but they will also be learning something new in each step. After the program has taken place I plan to evaluate my learning by the reaction from the clients. If they feel good about themselves afterward and feel like they have learned something and accomplished a new goal then I will know the program did what it was designed to do. I plan to sit down with them and ask them what their thoughts were and if they liked the program. I think it will be a positive experience for not only the clients but for me as well. I think this is something that we could continue to do even after the service learning is over. I think the way I handle myself when things go wrong will help me to evaluate if I have gotten better at coping when things don’t go as planned. If the clients learn from this experience they will be able to continue to help and their confidence will grow from there. If they enjoy learning new things and have an open mind to trying something they have never done and may be even scared to try, then I think the program will be a success. The need for programs like these is growing. Parents and caregivers of special needs individuals need time to take a break and this program could do just that. By teaching some of these skills we could take some of the burden of the primary care givers. Many families with special needs individuals have elevated health service use, multiple specialist appointments, expensive medical equipment, and functional difficulties that they have to deal with every day. Many of these individuals have neurodevelopment delays, nutritional or feeding problems, and technology dependency. Many primary health providers of special needs individuals report financial strain, and many hours devoted to caregiving and care coordination (Kuo et al., 2013). This puts a great amount of stress on them and the program we have designed will help to give them time for themselves and take away the stress of giving constant care. Appendix AAgency Name: House of Angles: In-Home Health Care Services Inc. Contact Person: Angie Ayers (owner)Contact Phone: (231) 649-2769Contact Email: angles@Contact Address: 5109 US 31 South Traverse City, MI 49685ReferencesBringle, R. G., & Hatcher, J. A. (1996). Implementing Service Learning into Higher Education. Journal of Higher Education, 67(2). Retrieved from Ferris State DatabaseHouse of Angels In-home Health Care Services Inc. (n.d.). , D., Robbins, J., Lyle, R., Barrett, K., Burns, K., & Casey, P. (2013). Parent-reported Outcomes of Comprehensive Care for Children with Medical Complexity. Families, Systems, & Health, 31(2), 132. Retrieved from Ferris State Database ................
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