In the US, human services and professional education of specialists in this sphere were first put under scientific research, and methods and technologies in the field received a comprehensive theoretical justification. Modern human services workers appear as carriers of a coherent system of professional values. It is not allowed to condemn a person on racial, ethnic, financial, and other indicators. Although in practice, the principles proclaimed in the US Constitution do not correspond to reality, which appears in the form of racism, the superiority of some social groups over others, with the condemnation of the poor. This paper will discuss the current issue in the human services field, namely, diversity and biases related to the ethnicity of people in need, and empirical research studies that present solutions to mitigate the problem.
One of the most critical problems of American society remains the diversity and social protection of racial and ethnic minorities in the country. This includes people at the lowest levels of social life, mainly black Americans, American Indians, Alaska natives, and others. Standards developed by the National Association of Social Workers (2015) claim that employees in this field must have cross-cultural knowledge, language, and communication skills to manage people in need professionally. Nevertheless, it is reported that the human services sphere is suffering from diversity issues and biases based on the ethnicity of people who require help. For instance, according to the Pew Research Center (2020), Asian and Black American people during the coronavirus pandemic experienced adverse events arising from the ethnic prejudices of human services workers. Biases associated with ethnic and racial status influence social workers in different human services systems; for instance, it is stated that “African American children were 2.2 times and Native American children were 2.9 times more likely to be placed in out-of-home care compared to white children,” which depends on the decisions made by authorities and social workers who are responsible for the disproportionality happening in the field (Ellis, 2019, para. 14).
Researchers have investigated the social sphere and its employees across different directions and highlighted that the issue of implicit racial and ethnic biases of social workers and healthcare professionals has a direct negative impact on the health outcomes of people who receive help (Hall et al., 2015). Nevertheless, the new empirical studies data reveal that, generally, American society has decreased its implicit negative biases towards anti-gay, anti-black, and anti-dark-skin attitudes (Charlesworth & Banaji, 2019). However, people who tried to get help in different social spheres still report that human services professionals treat them with prejudice regarding their social status and ethnic background (National Center for Health Statistics, 2015). Moreover, the same situation goes reversed when racist people do not allow human services specialists of another ethnicity to take care of them, causing even more enormous disparity in the field (National Center for Health Statistics, 2015).
It should be noted that non-discrimination in health, medical care, social security, and social services is listed among the Civil Rights Act statements of the United States. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964), discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, including measures with disproportionate consequences for minorities, has long been prohibited in all federally funded facilities (Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration & Management, n.d.). The implementation of the relevant laws is strictly monitored by the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs to eliminate disparities in access to health and human services. For example, in 2010, the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) obtained a decision requiring the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) to ensure that the closure of a hospital in a predominantly black/African-American area did not have a disproportionately negative impact on the residents of the neighborhood (Hostetter & Klein, 2018).
To address the situation, authorities and analysts have developed several effective solutions and methods to manage the ethnic biases of human services professionals. American Public Human Services Association (n.d.) states that it is necessary to evaluate root cause factors of prejudice in the human services field and handle biases based on diagnostic and facilitation tools provided by the organization, such as Race Equity Tool. A researchers’ report “Identifying Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Human Services” suggests that it is useful to facilitate a framework to assess disparities in the human services field and use the gathered data to deal with specific attitudes that human services professionals have in a particular organization (McDaniel et al., 2017). Studies also emphasize the opportunity for educational and anti-bias training for both parties, human services specialists and people who need help, to ensure that all people understand empathetically the need for collaboration to achieve effective results and help those in need gain a better social state (Simmons University, 2020).
To conclude, one can state that social work and the professional education system associated with the human services field in the United States have gone through an intricate development path before getting a modern look. To manage biases and implicit negative attitudes that social employees and human services workers, it is crucial to manage the inclusion of specialists from minorities in the field, promote high-visibility diversity projects, educate people through national and local campaigns to make them cross-culturally aware, and ensure that services delivered are of the highest quality and help people get to live the full life.
References
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Ellis, K. (2019). Race and poverty bias in the child welfare system: Strategies for child welfare practitioners.American Bar Association. Web.
Hall, W. J., Chapman, M. V., Lee, K. M., Merino, Y. M., Thomas, T. W., Payne, B. K., Eng, E., Day, S. H., & Coyne-Beasley, T. (2015). Implicit racial/ethnic bias among health care professionals and its influence on health care outcomes: A systematic review.American journal of public health, 105(12), e60–e76. Web.
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Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration & Management. (n.d.).Title VI, Civil Rights Act of 1964.Web.
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