Before and After School Care Program Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Before and After School Care Program - Essay Example Before and After School Care Program At present, many parents are able to give care to their children before going to school and after coming home from school. However, due to the financial crises that have been hitting the country for a long time, the number of children whose parents are both working to fulfill financial needs of the family, including single parents that also work, has increased up to 62% (Theobald, 2000). This shift also caused the changes in the people who interact and care for children, and mostly these are non-family members such as nannies or baby-sitters, school teachers, child care center workers and before- and after-school care providers (Sonenstein, Gates, Schmidt, & Bolshun, 2002). The before- and after-school programs provided education and care for children in an effective way so that parents would be able to work and add to the financial stability of the family, and for the children to have an enhanced development of their social and academic statuses (Blau & Currie, 2006). It was also reported that such programs that were designed to provide adult supervision to children by as much as two hours a day on average, depending on the age of the child. These activities are seen as extra-curricular activities that provide enrichment to a child’s development (Kleiner, Nolin, & Chapman, 2004). While most young and preschool children are sent to public day care centers or made prior arrangements to schools for extra-curricular activities by their parents, some companies also started offering child day care centers and other before- and after-school programs for working parents’ children, for their peace of mind during work hours (Working Mother, 2003). Companies are also able to assist working parents of school-aged children by providing flexible work hours and even working at home in order for them to be able to both work for financial stability as well as to be able to supervise their children’s growth and developme nt. Another example on how companies are able to help working parents is by providing parental leave privileges for those who just had a baby either by birth or through adoption. Such benefits offered by the employers not only increase the morale of their employees, but also gives the company a good public image, which in turn could increase their workforce and decrease worker turnover (US Department of Labor, 1994). An example of a company that gives its parent employees a chance to work for longer hours with less hassle is Intermedics Co., whom in 1979 built and opened a high-quality child care center in Freeport, TX. Even if there is a charge of $15 a week for full-time child care, the job turnover rates decreased up to 37% and the reduced absenteeism resulted in the company saving more than $2 million for the first two years (US Department of Labor, 1994). Some companies do not provide child care services, but are able to assist their working parent- employees through other mean s. A center for mildly ill children named Chicken Soup collaborated with employers in such a way that employees who brought in their children to the center instead of letting them stay at home were still able to go to work due to the proximity of the center to the workplace. Absenteeism was reduced and the employers were able to save up to 85% of the cost of having an absent employee (US Department of

Concept Analysis Paper on Nursing Advocacy Essay

Concept Analysis Paper on Nursing Advocacy - Essay Example Historically, patient advocacy has been a moral obligation for nurses. During recent years, nursing literature has been focused on the advocacy role and nursing professions has adopted the term 'patient advocacy' to denote an ideal of the practice. Nurses assume that they have an ethical obligation to advocate for their patients. They also frequently describe their judgments and actions on behalf of a patient as "being a patient advocate. An examination of advocacy in the nursing literature reflects broad and at times different perspectives. Advocacy has been described in ethical and legal frameworks and, more recently, as a philosophical foundation for practice. It has also been described in terms of specific actions such as helping the patient to obtain needed healthcare, assuring quality of care, defending the patient's rights, and serving as a liaison between the patient and the health care system. Although multiple factors influence the need for advocacy, it is generally true that someone in the healthcare environment must assume the role of client advocate, particularly for the client whose self-advocacy is impaired. Generally, advocacy aims to promote or reinforce a change in one's life or environment, in program or service, and in policy or legislation. In healthcare delivery, these activities focus on health conditions, healthcare resources, and the needs of patients and the public. When nurses advocate for patients, they face certain risks and obstacles associated with the settings within which they work. Therefore, there is always the possibility that attempts to advocate for a patient can fail, and that nurses can experience many barriers when addressing the rights, choices, or welfare of their patients (Negarandeh 2006). The term "advocacy" has been used in nursing literature to denote a variety of nursing roles, each derived from a specific set of beliefs and values. The changing forms of advocacy may actually reflect the metamorphosis of nursing from the role of loyal, subservient handmaiden to autonomous health care provider. Strong yet diverse feelings regarding the appropriateness of nurses to be advocates are evident in the nursing literature and may stem from the use of one word label, "advocate," to represent several related and sometimes conflicting concepts. These concepts are defined as follows: beneficence-the principle of doing good; nonmaleficence-the principle of do ing no harm; unitary-transformative paradigm-a perspective that views human beings as unitary, self-organizing energy fields interacting with a larger environmental energy field; and utilitarianism-an ethical doctrine in which actions are focused on accomplishing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Simplistic advocacy Mitty (1991) defined an advocate as one "who pleads the cause of another. She asserted that this role is implicit in the social contract between society and a profession such as nursing. She noted that although advocacy may occur at the individual or sociopolitical level, the underlying ethics guiding it varies from nurse to nurse. Ethics of justice might lead one nurse to advocate for a client's right to certain health care procedures, for example, whereas a nurse guided by an ethics of utilitarianism