Satisfaction with social care: the experiences of people from Chinese backgrounds with physical disabilities

Abstract

What is known about this topic• Underutilisation of disability support services is common among people from Chinese backgrounds in England.• A lack of knowledge of services available and language difference are known factors that lead to underutilisation.• In traditional Chinese societies, family bears the main responsibility for looking after relatives with health and social care need. What this paper adds• Language difference creates a barrier to negotiating access to and navigating through social care.• The cultural expectation of looking after their own and limited support from their small support network create tension during help-seeking.• The perception that their voices will not be listened to discourages expression of opinions when services are not meeting their needs. AbstractThe satisfaction of social care among service users provides an important indication of how services are performing. Although there is evidence to suggest that people from black and minority ethnic communities experience less satisfaction with social care than majority groups, there is little literature which focuses specifically on people from Chinese backgrounds in England. This article provides an opportunity to hear the voices of people from Chinese backgrounds and their experiences of social care for a physical disability. Individual semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted in 2012 and 2013 respectively with people from Chinese backgrounds who lived in England, were aged between 18 and 70, and received social care for a physical disability. Interview and focus group transcripts were analysed using a thematic approach. The findings show that language difference created a structural barrier for most participants to negotiating access to and navigating through social care. Language difference and the cultural expectation that families should look after their own were main factors that explained their late utilisation of social care. Because of limited social support, many families struggled to meet the long-term care needs of their relative with a physical disability and hence initially welcome the input of social care. However, many found that social care could not adequately meet their needs but did not feel that they had the right to voice their dissatisfaction. They would either stop using social care services or become more reliant on their family for support. Chinese welfare organisations play a crucial role to meet the cultural and linguistic needs of people from Chinese backgrounds. Closer collaboration between local authorities and Chinese welfare organisations is needed to enable an effective use of social care and community resources to meet the needs of people from Chinese backgrounds with physical disabilities.

The Perceptions of Spirituality and Spiritual Care Among People From Chinese Backgrounds Living in England: A Grounded Theory Method

“…This could be because the participants had less awareness of the social care services available in England. This is consistent with Yeung et al’s (2016) study which showed that only a small number of Chinese people had access to social care in England. The fact that participants had low awareness of social services could also be why they had a feeling of being marginalized.…”

Factors that influence the quality of paid support for adults with acquired neurological disability: scoping review and thematic synthesis

“…Results presented from the perspective of PWD [35,64,67,68,75] and close others [67,70] suggested a preference for DSWs taking a person-centred, humanistic approach to support. Feeling "seen" as a person was described by multiple participants with disability [35,67,75]. For example, a participant with multiple sclerosis expressed feeling understood and seen as a person when her support worker made individualised suggestions around her care [67].…”

“…In line with being responsive to needs, participants with disability valued support sensitive to their specific language and cultural needs [67,75]. The explicit focus of Yeung et al's [75] study was the experiences of Chinese PWD living in the UK and all participants appreciated support that met their language and cultural needs, or were Chinese-specific. This preference extended across all welfare services.…”

“…This subtheme pertained to factors within the individualised support and relationship themes. Continuity of support was noted as important by PWD, close others and DSWs for developing familiarity [35,64,68,69,75], building trusting relationships and setting boundaries [62,64,68,74]. A lack of continuity of support was reported to cause stress and anxiety for PWD [65,68,73,74] and their close others [62,68] due to associated difficulties with recruiting new support workers and rebuilding the relationship.…”

How people from Chinese backgrounds make sense of and respond to the experiences of mental distress: Thematic analysis

“…The rest is spread thinly across the country with clusters living in major cities such as Birmingham (12,700), Liverpool (7,978) and Manchester (13,500). The wide geographical distribution means that many might struggle to get help from culturally equivalent support networks in time of need (Yeung, Partridge, & Irvine, ; Rochelle & Shardlow, ). This raises the question of where and to whom they will seek help for MHPs.…”