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Outline and References

HHS 497: Health & Human Services Capstone

May 9, 2020

Health and human service professionals face various challenges while delivering services to homeless people. This paper covers the major challenges faced by human service professionals in delivering services to homeless people such as poor coordination between the various service providers, unwillingness of insurance providers to cover homeless people, language and cultural differences, locating the homeless people and developing quality relationships with the clients.

1. Locating homeless people.

1. Human service professionals struggle to find the homeless people.

2. This is because they do not have a permanent place to live.

3. They may establish camps in a particular area and move to another place the next day.

4. “Homeless shelters are most often night shelters, where people leave in the morning to do whatever they can manage and return in the evening when the beds in the shelter open up again for sleeping” (Sherraden et al, 2019).

1. Lack of coordination amongst services by various organizations inhibits service delivery to the homeless people.

1. Healthcare professionals are likely to coordinate poorly while providing services to homeless people.

2. Just like the general population, homeless people also need help in seeking medical care and counseling services.

3. Some healthcare professionals might not have previous health records of homeless people.

4. The insurance providers might not be willing to help homeless people.

1. Language and cultural differences

1. Human service professionals are likely to work with homeless people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

2. They may not understand the language spoken by people from various cultural groups.

3. They may struggle using sign language.

4. “The need to identify how language diversity affects service delivery is driven by the changing demographics of the United States” (Wirth et al, 2019).

1. Establishing quality relationships with the clients.

1. Some homeless people might not be welcoming.

2. If they do not have a good personality, it becomes more difficult for human service professions to help them.

3. Human service professions, however, have to identify the most appropriate to relate with the clients.

4. The mental illnesses of homeless people make it difficult for them to relate with other people well. “National estimates are that 20 to 25 % of homeless people are mentally ill” (Greene, 2017).

Human service professionals can hire individuals who come from similar cultural backgrounds to homeless people to enhance their level of communication. Since housing is a major problem, human service professionals can push for the establishment of housing programs for homeless people.

REFERENCES

Greene, R. (2017). Human behavior theory and social work practice. Routledge.

Sherraden, M. S., Birkenmaier, J., & Collins, J. M. (2019). Financial Capability for All: Training Human Service Professionals to Work with Vulnerable Families. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 53(3), 869-876.

Wirth, T., Mette, J., Prill, J., Harth, V., & Nienhaus, A. (2019). Working conditions, mental health, and coping of staff in social work with refugees and homeless individuals: A scoping review. Health & social care in the community, 27(4), e257-e269.