Paper Example on Professionalization of Social Care in Ireland

Introduction

Primarily, social care worker provides and plan professional care to vulnerable social groups or persons of all ages experiencing marginalization, special needs, or disadvantage. In addition to care provision to the client, Social Care Professionals also protect and advocate for such groups and individuals, support them to achieve their fullest potential. Professionalization of social care in Ireland has emerged because of a plethora of sociological injustices marked with various historical social scandals (Banks, 2012). Social care concerns and practices were unheard offs in Ireland and only took shape in 1922 after the formation of the state. However, in a shambolic society full of social injustice and social scandals, productive and strategic legal reform, policy enactments, foreign interventions, and freedom movements professionalize social care and transform the Irish society. Therefore, this paper seeks to underscore a critical discussion on the professionalization of social care in Ireland, the role of legislation in the transformation and the suffering Irish people (children scandal) in the care of state and private residential underwent due to unprofessional social care.

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Professionalization of Social Care Work Overview

Professional Social Care Worker both in Ireland and in the rest of the world has a primary mandate of planning and providing professional care to vulnerable persons and social groups of all ages experiencing special needs, marginalization, and disadvantage. Moreover, aside from caregiving, they also perform professional guidance, challenge, and support to vulnerable groups and individuals to achieve their fullest potential in life. The social care workers even fight for their client's civil rights through various platforms and process such through mass media and advocacy campaigns respectively (Miller & Cable, 2010).

The clientele base for professional social professionals is wide and varied. Their clients include people with physical or intellectual disabilities, adolescents and children in residential care, that also include young people in detention schools, homeless people in the community especially alcohol and drug addicts or dependent. As one might expect, the profession is engulfed with many challenges due to the nature of their clients, which need strong interpersonal relation. Consequently, the profession requires some fundamental job-related skills and core principles (Miller & Cable, 2010). The job is purely based on interpersonal skills and requires strong communication skills, empathy, the ability to use critical reflection and self-awareness. Key strategies such as teamwork as well as interdisciplinary work are paramount and central in the social care profession. Some of the underpinning Core values and principle pertinent to the profession include social justice, respect for the client's dignity, client's empowerment to achieve their fullest potential (Halton, 2014).

In addition, social care workers training equip them with among other things in parenting, interpersonal communication, lifespan development, and behaviour management. The training equips them to maximize social development and personal development of those they work with to realize their objective. In Ireland, a three-year level 7 degree is a prerequisite qualification to practice social care practice in any publicly funded health sector.

History of Social Care and Work Professionalization in Ireland

Historically, primary Irish social care practice came into form in 1922 following the formation of state from British colonialism. Key social landmarks in the country because of a series of social injustices to the vulnerable people alongside children scandals informed the decision to professionalize social care in Ireland. In what appeared as a foreshadow of social care profession, right after the independence of Ireland republic the Catholic Church pioneered caregiving practice gaining control over the former UK child care facilities in the country.

Catholicism and Health Care

Holistically, Irish community is a staunch Catholic society and a record holder of civil wars as well as social injustices amounting to numerous social problems in the country. The Catholicism and the theory of the religion have contributed significantly to the social issues affecting the country. Majority of the vulnerable people in the country are subjected to adverse living conditions and are marginalized due to the culture of violence that has been perpetuated in the country over the years (Banks, 2012). From children scandals in the residential care centres to controversial theories and beliefs have been perpetuated by the Catholicism in the nation have resulted into several social crime. For instance, the controversial notion that religious beliefs governing most aspects of state affairs, policy-making and even including essential issues such as healthcare provision. Some of the controversial doctrines and teaching of the Catholic religion in Ireland indicated and posited that the state was not responsible for matters affecting families and should only come in when the families fail in their roles.

The so-called the Irish project of "nation-building" was primarily mainstreaming and centralization of Catholicism doctrine, affairs, and theories in to state affairs. The move had a motive of intertwining Catholicism with Irish identity as opposed to British traditions or Anglo-Irish on the claim that they were a different and peculiar nation. The obsession with catholic religion to the extent of inculcating state affairs into the governance of state affairs such as policymaking, family insecurity matters, and healthcare provision paralyzed not only the social sector but also economic development in the country (Kelly, 2016). The situated led the nation into a sharp rise in inflation and other social implications such as poor health conditions, poverty vulnerability which called donations from other countries and support from voluntary hospitals.

Children Care and Children Scandals in Ireland

The purported Catholicism regime of designing an exemplary social construct of Irish people due to their claimed uniqueness as a people did not spare children sector. In the new and independent Ireland, the Catholic Church dominated social care work. With their notion, theories and brand of sociological philosophies they began and instituted the kicked off the children care as a way to control the religious and moral well-being of the family. The Catholic sociological thinking in Ireland was mainly driven by the motive to counteract the activities of non-Christians sociologist such as Marx and Durkheim in (1818-1883) and (1858-1917) respectively (Kelly, 2016).

Notably, the quest and the recognition to institute or professionalize social care came about because of Children Care Scandals that engrossed the Irish society due to the Catholic Church Care plan in the country. Furthermore, the sociological thinking of the Catholic has subjected the land into public disgrace as one of the countries in the world leading with bad social images and social injustices (Kilkelly, 2012). In addition, the social injustices did not only stop at the care residential homes set by the Catholic churches, but a replica of the same was even worse in state governed industrial schools. Majority of Irish people agrees and testify to the fact that they were abused in the state's reforms and industrial schools. The Irish people complaint of psychological, and physical sexual abuses in the government schools, which received orders from eighteen religious entities within the Catholic Church (In Lalor, & In Share, 2013).

Researches revels that several mother and baby homes were run alongside with laundries where unmarried mothers stayed until they give birth to their babies. It is discovered that before the drafting of the adoption act of 1952, a large number of children approximate 2,019 were adopted by American couples from those baby homes. The process was perpetuated by illegal links with the counterparts in America. The babies' mothers had two options to choose from, either to give their babies for adoption and leave home immediately or to choose to stay with their babies and stay for two or three years and leave the institution when their babies have grown.

In addition to the above high-level social injustice, the victims also ensured that the children adopted and only put under the care of Catholic parents, who were obliged to raise the child in the Catholic faith and doctrines as well as take the child to a Catholic school. The perpetrators of these scandals who were the religious leaders in charge of the care residential homes were inconsiderate of the children background welfare such as the Irish heritage, instead were obsessed with preserving the Catholicism culture in the child. Despite the enactment and implementation of the Adoption Act 2 of 1952, the illegal adoption of illegitimate children persisted. The attempts and efforts by the state to send the unruly for regular schools or the abandoned and abused children to industrial schools proved futile due to the persistent struggles between the church and the government (Kilkelly, 2012).

Consequently, it is because of the above implications of children scandals, the case of social injustices that no one was able and ready to bare that the call for sociology ensued. Various sociologist came to the spotlight to condemn the act and wrote reports that were against the religious-based social care home or care residential and opted for their governance by the state. The report commissioned by the department of education who instituted the commissioning of the schools also established the promotion of Sociological Association of Ireland in 1980, which in turn engineered the professionalization of social care practice.

The Era Before Professionalization and the Suffering of the Irish People

According to Gray & Birrell, (2013), the majority of the Irish people underwent great suffering due to numerous social problems perpetuated by both the Catholic Church and the state, and as a result, the ripple effects of those adverse activities are evident in the lives of Irish people to date. In 1950s majority of young people went through adverse conditions that emanated as because of state clerical abuse in intellectually disabled settings. The Ryan Report highlighted the widespread abuse of vulnerable children in intellectually disabled institutions as one of the ill social activities that the Irish community underwent. Together with the children scandal in the residential care and state's reform and industrial schools, the majority of children were born as illegitimate children.

Moreover, the children born, as illegitimate children had no homes, hence the process led to family breakups, many children become parentless as the adopted parents some failed to provide proper parental care and basic needs. Majority of the victims were subjected to extreme conditions of stress leading to the development of depression condition that resulted in some psychological disorders among the Irish community.

Similarly, as a result of weak state governance and purported social construct by the Catholicism in Ireland yield adverse living conditions. From the health care to, education, to matters finance to social development was all ruined by the involvement of religion into state affairs. Consequently, there was a significant economic depression in Ireland, with a sharp shot in inflation. The Irish community rendered vulnerable and became extremely poor. In addition, the frequent civil wars propagated a culture of violence in the midst of Irish that has persisted to date. The victims of war after experiencing mass killing and...