Aspects of Human Development

According to Kail and Cavanaugh (2018), human development involves several stages of physical, cognitive, social and emotional development. During this period, the individual develops values, belief systems, and perspectives as regards to how they view life and how they relate with other individuals, as well as make decisions.

Cognitive development

This involves the construction of an individual's thought process, including their memory, problem-solving and decision making abilities, from childhood to adulthood. Ford (2016) states that middle-aged adults witness continued cognitive development, with many becoming experts in a particular field or occupation (Poljac et al.

, 2018). Though the brain has attained maturity, the demands brought about by life lead to both cognitive gains and losses in this stage. Middle-aged adults face a number of challenges, which they are forced to learn to cope with to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

According to theorist Charles Spearman (1927), almost everyone possessed intelligence since it was responsible for all the cognitive abilities. A study across-sectional done by Zahodne et al.

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(2017) on adult intelligence involving middle-aged adult participants, which was repeated for 7 years, revealed that the main mental abilities that comprise intelligence include verbal memory, vocabulary, inductive reasoning, and numerical computation. This study shows that the mental abilities peak during middle adulthood. Nonetheless, they decline as the adult continues to age.

For many years, studies such as the one done by Congress (2017) revealed that intelligence declined after the mid-twenties. Nonetheless, this has been opposed by recent studies, showing that intelligence may start to decline after mid-to-late adulthood. Additionally, fluid intelligence declines with age, while crystallised intelligence remains steady with age.

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In this case, Janet is a middle-aged female who worked as a receptionist and could communicate in several foreign languages. Nonetheless, following the diagnosis, it may be difficult for her to continue communicating in the languages as well as work as a receptionist since her cognitive development has been affected negatively by the motor neuron disease as well as her age (Rathunde & Isabella, 2017). As such, Janet needs the care she is receiving at home and this should involve helping her remember things like her name and services number, when to wake up and her relatives and friends.

Physical development

As the human body continues to grow and change with age, an individual's body reaches a point where they no longer experience growth and changes due to hormones, thus slowly starts to change in other ways. In middle-adulthood, many people experience challenges, and how they handle these determine if they will achieve total happiness (Reynolds et al., 2017). During this age, they experience a lot of responsibility, including taking care of their children, and women experience menopause. When a female reaches menopause, they may experience hot flashes, emotional outbursts, and insomnia. This, in turn, may affect her sexual life.

However, most of these physical changes that take place in middle-adulthood can be compensated, for instance by exercising and eating healthy. As most midlife adults experience general good health, a small percentage may have a disability through their midlife: while 10% in their early 40s have a disability, the rate increases to 30% by the early 60s. According to Kagiticibasi (2017), this rate is higher among those of lower socioeconomic status.

In Janet's case, she was very active in sports and loved to travel. Nonetheless, due to the physical changes taking place in her body, she may not be able to participate in sports activities and also may experience some aches and pains in her body (Cotter et al., 2016). As such, she needs a caregiver her husband, who is going to help her go through this period and check her diet as well as help her to engage in small physical activities that keep her body active.

Love

Love is one of the emotional needs. The need to feel loved and accepted is inherent in midlife adults as they approach their old age, especially from their family. When an individual does not feel loved, they may become depressed and this may affect their health in general. According to Stanley et al. (2016), feeling loved and accepted in a family gives them a sense of fulfillment. Additionally, this is also pointed out in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where feeling loved completes the equation. The experience of love in middle adulthood will change. The person will rather focus on a good and healthy marriage relationship.

In this case, Janet had a great social life before the diagnosis. She used to spend a lot of time with husband, daughters and granddaughter caring for the feeling of love. For the feeling of the fulfillment, she will need to feel the same, although she is not able to spend time with her family and friends as before. To achieve the same level of love and acceptance, she should thus receive care at home, where she is close with her family and friends. Being close to the family and in the familiar well known environment would determine her happiness and wellbeing. Moving to the care home could affect her mental health.

Communicating

According to Hirschi (2017) communication is the essence of life; it enables human beings to express themselves, their feelings, thoughts, opinions and pass on information about other people. Everybody needs to communicate to learn and teach, as stated by Joseph et al. (2016).

At the middle-life stage, the individual tends to gain their intelligence through experience, which is gained through undergoing different circumstances that often take place in a person's mid-life stage, such as taking care of children, seeking a promotion at the job, building a home, divorce or losing one's job. When the individual undergoes these situations, they gain experience and tend to learn how to handle different situations (Zeigler et al., 2015). Additionally, to cope with such situations, they need to communicate their feelings and thoughts to their partners, children, and friends or colleagues at work. However, in this case, Janet may find it difficult to communicate with her children and friends due to her disease, and this, in turn, may affect her learning experience and ability to express what she feels and thinks. As such, Janet should receive care at a care home where she will learn to cope with her situation through observation and she will communicate with the professionals who have been trained on how to communicate with individuals with such conditions.

Mobility

Physical needs are those things that are required for physical survival for example food, drink, sleep, warmth and shelter. Personal hygiene, rest and exercise are contributing to help meeting physical needs. Due to an effect of the disease Janet is experiencing difficulties in meeting his own physical needs. Motor neurone disease is a rare condition where parts of the nervous system become damaged. This causes progressive weakness, usually with muscle wasting. Janet need a lot of help to meet her physical needs. Her body is changing dramatically and rapidly making it difficult to perform daily tasks. Before she became ill, she was an ordinary person, independent of anyone. As the disease develops, her body is subject to many changes. First of all, her ability to move has changed. Day by day her muscles are getting weaker and she can't move alone and becomes more dependent on the wheelchair. She needs a lot of help with washing, dressing, eating, drinking and is becoming more dependent on her family. Other physical changes include coordination, reaction time and sensation. Therefore, Janet requires some form of activity. Some kind of exercise can't reverse damage to muscles weakened by MND. However, they may help to maintain muscles not already affected by the disease or maintain movement in joints to help prevent stiffness and pain. This can be achieved when she engages in some kind of exercise. Also, therefore, she may need different mobility equipment that may not always be suitable for use at home, like mobile hoist or accessible bath. As such, Janet would do better in a care home where she would receive such services, that have been tested scientifically to improve her physical health. In most cases, receiving care at home means that her husband may be away sometimes to engage in other home activities, this might not always be around her or may not have appropriate equipment to take care of Janet. On the other hand, when receiving care at a care home, professionals would be watching her almost every moment to ensure she is active and healthy.

Greenfield Park Care Home

The care center is Located on the outskirts of Glasgow City and is close to social amenities and public transports. The care center provides care for adults with neurological conditions such as Janet's, and other mental conditions. The center features separate dining rooms and lounges, where patients can get a chance to socialize and enjoy each other's company at meat times. Additionally, the invite specialised chiropodist and therapists occasionally to assess their service users.

The Positives

The care center's manager ensures that all staff is experienced and they are kind to the services users, as postulated in the SSSC Codes of Practice 2016 (Chng et al., 2018). The managers support all his employees to achieve the standards set by the Code of Social Service workers and use them as a tool to evaluate their performance. The staff treat all service workers with respect and equally, regardless of their gender, religion or race. Additionally, the service users are allowed to have a say in the care they receive and their boundaries are respected. These positives aspects are in line with the Equality Act of 2010. Additionally, the care centre has followed the rules as stated in the Regulation of Care Act 2001 by providing care for the residents with mental health issues. Moreover, the centre respects the human rights of all residents and only applies compulsory measures of detention when there is a significant risk of the safety of other service users and staff.

The Negatives

The main drawback at this care centre is that the management sometimes ignores complaints by services users regarding the conduct of their employees (Pound & Campbell, 2015). The management has failed to take action against employees who have been accused of breaking one of the rules of the SSSC Codes of Practice or the Equality Act, and this has had a negative effect on some service users who feel unprotected.

LittleInch Erskine Care Centre

The positives

This care centre is located in Erskine and was established a decade ago. The centre is bright, cheerful and airy and collects clients from their homes and returns them at the end of the day. A dedicated team of professionals is always ready to take proper care of the clients and ensures that their needs, likes, and dislikes are protected (Rathunde & Isabella, 2017). The care cnetre has considered the care environment for therapeutic purposes and conducts assessments, care planning as well as evaluation to track the progress of their clients.

This centre provides high-quality care and support to the clients and their staff is disciplined to handle different situations. All the staff are fully certified and qualified for their respective positions and showcase good communication and listening skills. The main advantages of the care centre are their ability to connect with their clients at a personal level and also treating them equally (Kagitcibasi, 2017). All issues are handled systematically; complaints from clients and their relatives or friends are investigated and the staff, if found guilty are disciplined appropriately. This has encouraged transparency in the centre and effective care services.

The Negatives

Some employees have failed to uphold the Code of Conduct, which includes taking accountability for one's actions, promoting and upholding the privacy, dignity, and rights of all clients, working in collaboration with their colleagues to ensure they deliver high-quality care services and promoting inclusion and equality as stated in the Equality Act of 2010 (Reynolds et al., 2017). Some few staff have failed in this part, and this has affected the quality of service provided in the care centre.

Updated: May 19, 2021
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Aspects of Human Development. (2019, Dec 08). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/aspects-of-human-development-essay

Aspects of Human Development essay
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