In my placement, I am in a locality center which works with individuals with a variety of different needs. They work alongside the families of the individuals to ensure that they can meet all their needs if it can happen. Daily clients are picked up from their home or meet the worker and they go on to do activities which will benefit them, which they have been choosing for themselves. Most of the clients suffer from autism in some way or have mobility issues, all of the clients require different amount of support. The centre try and create groups from individuals which they fell will work well together and are interested in the same activities and allow them to meet first and ensure that they do get on before taking them into different places.
My role is to assist other members of staff while out with clients. I assist clients to their clubs and groups on a daily basis in the placement. One of the main individuals which I work with has childhood autism. The lady struggles with basic day to day activities such as communicating and being able to express the appropriate expressions and may interoperate things in the wrong manor. While I am working with this lady I have to be more clear on what I am saying to ensure that she fully understands what I am saying or asking her. Things must be said slower to ensure that she doesn’t get stressed out or agitated.
While working with this person I have had many struggles but have had conversations and made her feel more secure about herself in congratulating her when she has completed something, this is because she likes to know you recognise what she has done. Although this is a small thing it makes her feel as though you do appreciate her. We will continue to work alongside with her and continue to congratulate her, and continue to build her confidence. Neuroscience is a natural science, this science is the way in which the nervous system develops the structure and its function. The main area is the way the brain works and the cognitive functions which it provides. I am looking at what happens to the nervous system when people have got a developmental disorder.
Cognitive neuroscience is the area which links in with autism, this is because it looks into the cognitive functions in the human body. This area looks at the linguistics, psychology and cognitive science. Looking into the brain, the amygdale appears to be underactive in individuals who have autism. This causes them to struggle with their communication skills and how to show the appropriate expressions. Erik Erikson’s theory of psychological development is one of the best known theories of personality in psychology. The theory on life stages relates well to my situation as it works through all the stages in life that we should be at and when we should achieve these by.
Erikson’s theory works well as I have looked into five stages of the user’s life from infancy to older adulthood. While looking into this I realized that she is meeting the stages but not when they should be getting meet. For each stage it is a build onto the previous stage and cannot meet one stage without the one before. Erikson believes that a person’s personality does develop in a series of stages the theory described the impacts of social experiences throughout the whole lifespan.
Erikson was intrigued by how social interaction and the way relationships plays a role in the development and the growth of us as a person. For the stages in Erikson’s theory it builds on the preceding stages and leads the way for following periods of development. Within each stage he believes that people experience a conflict that serves as a turning point in the development. From the view of Erikson these conflicts are centred on developing a psychological quality or failing to develop, during this the potential for personal growth is high but also has the potential to fail. If the individual deals with the conflict successfully, they will emerge from the stage with psychological strengths which will help them well for the rest of their life. If she fails to deal with these effectively, she will find it a struggle to develop further in her sense of self.
Erikson has a belief in, that a sense of competence will motivate the behaviours and the actions which we take. For every stage in the theory it is concerned with having the knowledge in an area of life. When the stage has been dealt with well, the individual will feel a sense of achievement, which is related to ego strength or ego quality. If the stage was failed to be completed, the individual will have a sense of incompletion in that area of development. Looking further into the stages the individual which I am working with is in the ‘stage 5’ Identity vs. Confusion.
In this stage it is where we are in the childhood stage of finding our own independence and begin to develop into a sense of self. The individual has received the encouragement and reinforcement through her life and has been encourages to be independent and have her own self control. Although this has been done the individual will still rely on other to help her through and for this she is still in this stage of childhood. The reason due to me linking this theory is due to the strengths of psychological theory as it provides a framework to view development as a whole through the lifespan.
It has allowed me to look at how social nature and how important influence has on the social relationships have on the development of an individual. Another theorist that links in with cognitive theory is Lev Vygotsky, he has become the research of theory, which has become known as social development theory in the last few decades. Vygostky theory stress the role of social interaction through the role of cognition, as Vygotsky believed strongly in that community has a role in the process of ‘making meaning’. Vygostky argued with other theorists that ‘learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function’. In other terms the social learning often comes before development.
He has developed the sociocultural approach to the cognitive development. Although he died at the age of 38 and completed his work in Russian, they have been transferred into English. The development of an individual can’t be understood without being referenced to the social and cultural context which it is embedded into. The higher mental process in the individual has their origin within the social process.
This theory connects well with my individual as he states that ‘cognitive development stems from social interaction’, this particular part of this theory broadens my knowledge on how this links in with the individual. This is a well shown link as threw my research I know that as a child she struggled to interact with others and stuck to the same people or watched others while they played. Further on through the effects of culture looking deeper into this he emphasis on the role of language development. He separates the systems from the beginning of life, he looked into this and believed that the merging begins around three years of age, which begins the producing the verbal thought, of inner speech. This for him is linked in with the support of the adult threw the cognitive development. Through this adults are meant to transmit their intellectual adaption to their child.
Although this is supposed to be the case for my individual who has autism this process can proceed on further than that of an infant who is at the correct stage for their range. For the individual this area has never been fully developed as she is still unable to correctly join together sentences, her mother who is her main role model, she is trying to transfer and help her daughter gain the intellectual skills which she developed while she was growing up. To continue looking into individuals, I have looked at life experiences which may cause some resilience and effects of wellbeing on the individual. Resilience is how an individual will perceive, appraise, approach and tackle stress and challenges which they may come across. I can link my individual with the stress factor of leaving her parent behind, as this causes her levels to become high and affects the experience which she is having. As her and her mother are close most of the week when she is picked up to go out for the day she refers to her mother as ‘lazy’ due to her not joining us.
This leaves her in a stressed situation which can most of the time affect her day.
