El Centro Hispano
Identify a human service organisation that employs workers from your discipline and the selected field and domain of practice. Discuss the role of the human service professional and the knowledge and skills required in the context of the chosen field of practice.
Activities and happenings in everyday human life tend to create differences. These differences expose others to be more disadvantaged than the others, and it is a common thing among humans to assist one another, out of goodwill or obligation. These assistances offered to the underprivileged aims at elevating their lives into a better level is termed as human service. Human service is a broad topic that entails many varied activities (Swijghuisen Reigersberg, 2017). It is the process of meeting the human needs through offering a helping hand such as knowledge, remediation of problems and maintaining a commitment to improving the overall quality of life of services. The article furthers potential ethical dilemmas that arise in working with culturally diverse clientele and how the code of ethics can be applied to avoid culturally diverse problems by these human service workers
The human service profession tends to promote enhanced service delivery and have systems that address not only the variety of direct services but also seeks to improve the accessibility, accountability, and coordination among the professionals and agencies in service delivery. Numerous organizations have the objective of elevating the quality of human life such as, health organizations, advocacy organizations and community-based organizations that address problems that arise among the community such as drug use among youths and home violence against women among many others (Schmidt, 2011). The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of human service profession and the knowledge, values, and services required in El Centro Hispano, a community-based organization.
El Centro Hispano is a comprehensive community-based organization that is focused on serving the immigrants that are mainly located in the Durham, North Carolina, and other locations within the state such as Chapel Hill and Carrboro among others. The non-profit organization was founded in 2000 with aims of offering health, education, leadership development, and community services.
The primary purpose of human service professionals is to effectively offer assistance to communities and individuals to function more efficiently in significant domains of living. In the El Centro Hispano, one of the roles of the professionals was to elevate the life of the women who recorded high number of HIV/AIDS infection.
Roles of Human Service Profession at El Centro Hispano
This a refugee innovative program that aims at serving the Sussex County’s that are currently growing with the Latino population.The CBO, in conjunction with the New Jersey Department of State, Office of the Faith-Based Initiative, Center for Prevention and Counseling, Big Brothers Big Sister and Christ Episcopal Church offers care for the refugees from the Latin.
Cultural diversity- to effectively work as a health professional, one is required to be diverse in culture, especially for the Hispanic population that entails many cultural origins such as Mexico, South America, Cuba among others. Having the ability to embrace each culture enables one to co-exist and solve any cultural problem more efficiently mutually.
Education requirements-To become a social and effective health service worker, there are specific education and knowledge that one is supposed to gain. For a manager of an organization, one will be required to have a bachelor’s degree in related fields such as healthcare administration on diverse culture workforce, while for the field officers one will be required to possess diplomas or certificates in social work. The education qualification enables one to know how to approach different situation critically and provides one with basic knowledge on the universal language that is commonly used among the community that is composed of a different culture.
Problem-solving skills-To effectively work as a health service professional, one is required to poses high problem-solving skills. Most of the community’s issues always need critical thinking from the professional to create a solution by using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weakness of all alternatives solutions. For example, in providing a solution to women violence, youth drug usage, and many other factors.
Communication skills- as a health service worker, having full attention on what people are saying and taking time to understand the points being made are fundamental. This will help to understand each situation differently enabling the professional to make a critical approach (Prosser, Tuckey & Wendt, 2013). Different cultures have different communicating skills, and the Hispanic population is composed of different cultures such as people from Cuban, Central America, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and other Spanish culture. These forms diverse communication skills those are required for the professional to offer the human services to the population effectively.
Persuasion skills- the ability to convince individual help community workers in solving and elevating the lives of the individual from a negative perspective to a favorable view (Ghaddar et al., 2010). The persuasion ability helps the affected to drop some of the health-affecting problems such as excessive use of drugs and violence and embrace the positive side of life.
El Refugio Program
Negotiation skills- enable the community health worker always to have the ability to intercede between parties that are in a fight, for example, a fight between couples or between groups in a family. The ability to bring together all the parties and make peace is critical for a health service worker.
Coordination skills- enable the professional to have the ability to bring together all the community activities into conformity for the benefit of all cultures.
Social Dilemma
The health service workers have a responsibility in elevating the health status of the community they are based on. However, this at times always difficult as a result of the posed challenges that the cultural diversity represents (Fox & Zagumny, 2017). Different cultures have different approaches to solving their health issues: for example, other communities tend to rely more on the traditional methods of medication that does not concur with the modern techniques of medications. These differences pose difficulty for most of the health workers. Taking an example among the Hispanic women, therefore, is difficulty in mitigating the widespread of HIV/AIDS: the HIV/AIDs intervention program that was launched by El Centro Hispania that consisted of five sessions met some cultural rejections. The Hispanic women did not well adopt the condom negotiation and condom use (McCord, 2014). The cultural values machismo (masculinity) and Mariano(femininity), promoted equitable gender norms that made it difficult for the women to negotiate safer sexual practices(Falicov,Tuckey & Wendt, 2013).
These cultural practices prohibit condom nurse negotiation from the women and also require them to be obedient and submissive to their male counterparts. These made it difficult to for the health service professional to offer advice on how to reduce HIV/AIDS infection, resulting into the rise of the infected women to four times more than the white women counterparts in 2006 hence accounting for almost 17% of the newly infected in the US.
Communication dilemma
Health service professional needs to effectively communicate with people within a community to effectively impact them. In a culturally diverse population such as in North Carolina, have different cultural languages that market the professional to get confused on which style to use. Some encouragement and counseling always work best when the worker identifies with the specific culture; and in most case is possible only when the worker is capable of speaking the same language with the affected person.
General inadequate knowledge about specific culture
Health service professional always gets into a dilemma when confronted with cultural mistrust. This makes it difficult for the patients or the clients to fully open up and share the inner details of the problems; therefore, without adequate information, it is difficult for the health service worker to offer constructive advice that will elevate the client’s health (Ambrose-Miller & Ashcroft, 2016). The health service workers are always in a dilemma when the client trust neighbors more than them, especially in collective community; making their work difficult at the same time they have the strong urge to help the clients.
Knowledge required for the services
Code of Ethics and Application at El Centro
Code of ethics refers to the standard that is designed to guide the behavior and action of an individual within a community or organization (Roura et al., 2015). The community health workers are required to build trust and community capacity by improving the health and social welfare of the client they serve. In situations of conflicts, all issues are considered, and those that promote wellness are given priority.
CASW(2005) Guidelines for Ethical Codes indicate that social workers should be able to provide the social work services in a language that aims most preferred by the client(Proser, Tuckey & Wendt, 2013). Therefore this means that it is upon the social worker to find a way for understanding the client in case of language barriers. The social workers can solve this by securing services of a qualified professional interpreter, or use the common non-verbal behaviors and communication style to facilitate the understanding of the things being conversed.
Confidentiality
Confidentiality requires that a community health worker respect the privacy of the clientele by keeping all they shared information between them, without involving the irrelevant third party. The confidentiality helps in building trust between the health service worker and the clientele (Naccarella, Butterworth & Moore, 2016). For example, in the El Centro Hispania, women are afraid to share the use of a condom with male counterparts. By building trust between the women, the health worker is capable of finding a better way of convincing them on how to approach their males over the issues in a move to mitigate the spread of HIV/AIDs.
Cultural Humility
The cultural humility ethical code requires that the health service workers to possess expertise in the various communities that they are serving. The acquired knowledge enables the health service workers to maintain a high degree of humility and respect for the cultural diversity in Carolina that is composed of different cultural backgrounds such as Mexico, Cuba, and many others.
Maintaining trust in the community
The health service worker is always required to build and maintain the confidence of the communities they are serving (de la Rubia & Lopez Rosales, 2013). The health workers are needed to engage in activities that can jeopardize the relationship such as having stereotypes jokes. The health service workers should always maintain respect, and personal boundaries to ensure that the client relationship is as expected.
Cultural competence
Ethical Dilemmas
The ethical code also dictated that a health service professional should be cultural competent so as to administer the services in a culturally diverse .this effectively will entail attitude, awareness, knowledge, and skills of various cultures.
Anti-discrimination ethical code– requires that the health service worker desists from discriminating against any person by race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. This is much applicable is ensuring that all the communities in Carolina are well and equitably served(Lampert & Glasser, 2018). The health service worker should also ensure that the human rights adhere too and no activity should be done without the consent of an individual.
Conclusion
Health services are a broad topic that entails many organizations such as health organizations, advocacy organizations and community-based organizations that addresses problems that arises among the community such as drug use among youths and home violence against women among many others with the aim of elevating the human living standards. Example of the community-based organization is El Centro Hispano that operates among the Hispania who are majorly composed of refugees from different parts of the world such as Mexico, Cuba, South America and Africa.
These create a diverse culture that offers different challenges to the health workers such as communication barriers, cultural differences, mistrust among many others. However using the professional ethical codes, the health service workers such as Anti-discrimination ethical code, moral trust code, confidentiality, cultural humility among others will help the professional to work in Carolina and among many other diverse communities effectively.
References
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Cowan, B. A. (2017). How Machismo Got Its Spurs–in English: Social Science, Cold War Imperialism, and the Ethnicization of Hypermasculinity. Latin American Research Review, 52(4), 606-622. doi:10.25222/larr.100
de la Rubia, J. M., & López Rosales, F. (2013). Premisas socioculturales y violencia en la pareja: diferencias y semejanzas entre hombres y mujeres. Estudios Sobre Las Culturas Contemporáneas, 19(38), 47-71.
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Fox, B. L., & Zagumny, L. (2017). Organizational Approaches To Addressing Machismo And Sexuality In Cuba. Journal Of Ethnographic & Qualitative Research, 12(2), 97-109.
Ghaddar, S., Brown, C. J., Pagán, J. A., & Díaz, V. (2010). Acculturation and healthy lifestyle habits among Hispanics in United States-Mexico border communities. Revista Panamericana De Salud Publica, 28(3), 190-197.
Ghaddar, S., Brown, C. J., Pagán, J. A., & Díaz, V. (2010). Acculturation and healthy lifestyle habits among Hispanics in United States-Mexico border communities. Revista Panamericana De Salud Publica, 28(3), 190-197.
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Naccarella, L., Butterworth, I., & Moore, T. (2016). Transforming health professionals into population health change agents. Journal Of Public Health Research, 5(1), 21-26. doi:10.4081/jphr.2016.643
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Prosser, B., Tuckey, M., & Wendt, S. (2013). Affect and the lifeworld: Conceptualising surviving and thriving in the human service professions. Health Sociology Review, 22(3), 318-327. doi:10.5172/hesr.2013.22.3.318
Roura, M., Domingo, A., Leyva-Moral, J. M., & Pool, R. (2015). Hispano-Americans in Europe: what do we know about their health status and determinants? A scoping review. BMC Public Health, 15(1), 1-18. doi:10.1186/s12889-015-1799-x
Schmidt, C. (2011). The tension between inner and outer dynamics in professional human service work. Journal Of Social Work Practice, 25(3), 351-363. doi:10.1080/02650533.2011.597185
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