Human Services and Poverty Human Service Resources

Human Services and Poverty

Human Service Resources for the Poor

Human services has the unique responsibility of trying to meet the needs of a diverse set of people, but people within the discipline have usually acquired the skills necessary to complete the task (Anderson, Halter & Gyzlak, 2002). One of the major focus of any human services organization is to reduce the impact of poverty. The term is generally held as "reduce the impact" because it is an acknowledged fact that there will probably always be those who are financially, or in some other way, poor (Burkhauser, 2009). It has been said from ancient times that the poor will always be with us, but that does not means that the people who have some type deficit should not have the same access to services that those with better circumstances have. The bigger issue for the professionals who work in some type of human services organization is providing the services despite any issues that the potential recipients might have (Turetsky, 2001). Around the world, poverty looks different depending on the culture. What would be considered poor in the United States, would be rich in other parts of the world. Also, the services available do not match in all parts of the world. The focus of this essay is the health services that are available to different individuals around the world through human services agencies, and what is being done to make like services available regardless the geography, the country's political situation, or the availability of local resources.

Health services are essential to people no matter where they happen to reside, but in many corners of the world sufficient healthcare is not available except to those rich enough to afford it. Even in some western industrial countries, the issue not wealth and healthcare come into play. In countries where the average income of individuals is high, the cost of healthcare is also high (Poole & Colby, 2002). This means that there is a need for human services agencies to support people no matter where they happen to reside.

The first question then for a human services worker to ask is what constitutes poverty (Anderson, Halter & Gyzlak, 2002)? Since that definition varies depending on the location of the individual, it is necessary to determine who has the need for a particular service. Poverty also may not be as much a function of actual wealth as it is the ability of the individual to access a particular service (Patten, 2005). In the United States, healthcare costs continue to rocket out of control (Weaver & Park, 2007). Because there is no access for every person in the country to a universal healthcare system, everyone in the U.S. must have some personal access to healthcare. This also means that there are people who are considered middle class who cannot afford healthcare services. Therefore, determining who is poor within a specific context is difficult. Also, financial poverty is not the only kind of poverty (Burkhauser, 2009). So the person and the situation have to be considered especially when the poverty involves access to healthcare.

In the United States and many of the other industrialized nations, it is also a question of the type of healthcare. People are able to access care for their children, from birth through the age of 18, but these may only be rudimentary services. However, in other parts of the world human services agencies are tasked with providing every type of care for impoverished children and adults. In some countries there would be no modern healthcare if it was not for agencies that were able to send people to remote locations (Anwander, 2005). Healthcare is not a guarantee in many areas of the world because either the village is too remote, there are too many people who need services, or there is some local custom which must be understood and overcome. There are agencies that provide for the repair of cleft palates, doctors without borders which goes to remote and war torn areas to provide healthcare services, and agencies which seek funds from wealthier countries through pitiful advertisements. Regardless of the need, there is a human services agency which will try to provide for it.

Areas of the southwest United States, have large populations of immigrant Hispanic peoples and American Indians. Many times the difficulty accessing health services for these people is because they have customs which will not allow them to accept the types of treatments doctors recommend. It is often a matter of trust between an indigenous population which has grown very wary of the majority culture (Hamilton, 2010). Sometimes, even when an immigrant family has worked its way out of a typical impoverished situation and has moved into a better area and a better occupational situation, they still have difficulty trusting the system of the majority culture (Crowley, Lichter & Qian, 2006).

Even in countries considered part of the "third world" designation have the same issue with people accepting or rejecting human services. Trust is a valuable commodity, but it must be earned for someone who has lived in poverty their entire lives (Mabughi & Selim, 2006). People who live in poverty may glean what they can from the larger society so that they can survive, but when it comes to areas like healthcare, the people actually have to trust the professionals. Since many of these people have been self sufficient and non-trusting of the majority culture for many years, they have difficulty in trusting that they will not be harmed by a treatment which to them is very foreign (Speth, 1998).