Treatment Case

In this paper I will characterize my relationship with clients that my wife has taken care of over the last five years and how I feel their treatment is not ethically correct. My wife works in a group home with several individuals that have been born as angels and that are starred at on daily basis. All individuals in the home that my wife works at and all the individuals within the other homes that her company owns and runs are all physically, mentally disabled, or both. None of them chose the life or the homes that they have been chosen by God to live in.

All individuals in the company have illnesses such as psychosomatics, different levels of mental retardation, autism, down syndrome, and many other mental illnesses. They suffer from physical disabilities such as many are wheelchair bound and can do nothing out of a wheel chair but sleep and get showered, some even have to sleep in wheel chair like equipment. Individuals in these homes all range from ages of I believe 17 years old to 91 years of age. Many are full of smiles, even when they don't want to they have the permanent smile due to their illnesses.

As many times as I have visited the home my wife works in and a few of my friends work in, along with other homes around the country, I have seen that none of them are as great as they could be. I hear stories from all sides of the spectrum and sometimes I just don't know what to make of them. I have a few times stopped and "Googled" the company name and found different stories about things that have happened in these homes. I do not think a long with many others that I have discovered online that these homes are ethically fit or that these individuals are receiving the ethical treatment that every human being should have.

Where should I start? I will start by saying in this paper, I will describe the homes I have read about including; brief description of home and the shape that many are in, the size of the rooms, and shape of different equipment that is used by many individuals in these types of home. I will also discuss the food in which these clients are given to eat.

There are many homes around the company not exactly including the company in which my wife works for that are unfit homes for any family to live in. However, the government finds it ok for the homes that they finance to be in whichever shape they feel is livable, or they just let them stay ragged down until they decide to move all clients and staff to a entirely different home or finally breakdown and fix a few things just to make the home "livable". To use an example, the house that I visit often, is nice on the outside but once you step in, it is another story. Many houses in which I have been in are like this, just like our county mental behavioral health department building.

The houses and buildings are nice looking on the outside but once you step in, oh my. One home when you step inside, if you look up you'd be afraid to stand still you'd either be bound to run forward or step back out the house, the ceiling looks as if it is going to cave in. The odor in all these homes is horrendous. I have heard stories of staff cleaning as long as they could possibly do so and they say the odor never leaves. The carpet in every home and the carpet and tile in the behavioral center is disgusting. The behavioral center has been up for centuries and I have heard that the carpet hasn't been changed in over a century, it is now brown with very few yellow/gold spots on it, the color of the carpet before all the filth landed on it. When staff or the home managers ask for these to be replaced, they are told to put in maintenance requests, so they do and they may be lucky to hear something back months later. Once I was told for a carpet replacement they wait to see how long before the state declares it destroyed before they will touch replacing it, and they don't let staff clean them. This is a major violation as many clients have allergic reactions or are to misbehaved for this to happen.

As well as the carpets being disgusting, the walls are sad things. You walk in most of our homes but possibly not all and you will probably cry. Many of the homes I have witnessed and seen pictures of or laid my eyes on have been full of holes, damaged, dirty to the extreme, some even have mold growing up them. Not only are the floors and walls sad, but some of the size of the homes are sad too.

Some bedrooms I have seen are so small that once a set of bunked beds is placed in them with twin top and bottoms that you'd be lucky if you could squeeze in a four drawer dresser on both ends and have any room to walk. I do not see how this is fit at all for some of the peoples disorders they have. The lighting is another issue, the last time I stepped into a home down south in Louisiana; I had to turn the flashlight on my phone on because the lighting in the home was so poor. I do not see how this ethically correct, non what so ever. These are government finance based and these people have no choice but to live in the poor shape homes that they live in. I do not feel that the size of these "government" ran homes are the right size and I think the government needs to step in to reassure these homes of their cleanliness and do what they have to do to place the correct amount of clients into a home. "The size of the committee should be consistent with the needs of the institution but not so large as to be unwieldy" (JAMA, 1985).

Now that we have discussed the shape of the homes and buildings these individuals live in, lets discuss their placement. Many individuals in these types of institutes or homes, are often placed with others to live with that their disabilities or diagnoses do not "click" with one another. For instance, I do not see how it is at all right to place to two individuals with psychosomatic or suicidal personalities in a home or even to share a room together, if the staff is there to help them. I do not see how them filling each other heads with "crazy ideas" or "crazy thoughts" is anywhere close to being ethically right. I also do not see how placing a client with a total ethnic background into a home with seven other clients of another ethnicity and two being racist is anywhere ethnically correct either. I do know of a specific home that is like this and the odd ball of the clan is constantly teased and bullied.

The fact that this individual is singled out is a part that is supposed to protected by the different U.S. racial and ethnic minorities and non-minorities (Board of Health Sciences Policy, 2002), but in this specific home it has not been dealt with. This clientreceiving unequal treatment than the other clients,is a situation that then runs into the topics that are briefly described in the report, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial