Human services are movements, which seek to address the needs of the less privileged in the society. While offering their services, organisations are faced with three main barriers in planning, funding and empowerment of their clients.
These barriers include organization, provision of transportation to clients, keeping trail of clients, and ensuring that prospective clients are reached. To address these barriers, the use of technology became very essential for an organisation to concentrate on its core activities.
Technological solutions also provide the human services with a chance to handle its responsibilities with ease and incur minimum costs. This involves the use of applications that address the barriers that exist in the human services on a continual basis and upgrading it to meet the changing demands.
The desire of human service to be more productive and organised involves the careful organisation of its activities, clearly portraying the sources of its funding, showing the track of its clients and finding means in which they can access their clients.
For effective management and budgeting of these activities, it requires the incorporation of appropriate technology that can be able to reveal and store the records of the organisation. In management of funds of the organisation, it is essential to establish means in which anyone with authorisation can know the source of funding, how the funds are being utilised and ways in which they can contribute to the organisation.
With the presence of good financial planning the human services can be able to offer its services to their clients accordingly and appropriately.
The use of technology becomes very critical to offer the services to the clients who are widely spread in the inaccessible parts of the country. The offices that are decentralised are interconnected with satellite and this facilitates the adoption of other essential software.
Internet access by the clients in their areas of residence enables the human services to organise meetings and communicate consistently whenever there is any need.
For communication to be effective the human services uses emails to distribute notices, meeting notes and any concerns of the organisation (Gillam 126). Such formality enables everyone to be updated any give any suggestion and direction to the agency.
Application of technology like the development and use of spread sheets facilitate the organisation to critically maintain and utilise its data effectively. Spread sheets allow the organisation, management and utilisation of data. This application software is used to indicate where funding is obtained from, analyze how the funding is used, process the financial data and indicate the financial standing of the agency.
By use of this software the agency financial standing can be determined and be used to lobby for funds, presented to the federal government, negotiate for favourable laws and shown to any interested as a source of indicating the credibility of the agency. This software can deal with the barrier of organization sufficiently.
For most of the active and prospective clients, transport is the hindering factor in their reception of services from the human services. Since transportation infrastructure is not extensive, the demand of means to access these clients become essential. Human services utilises the internet to provide information by use of application like PowerPoint presentation and Microsoft word.
PowerPoint presentation enables the clients to learn new things by themselves at their dwelling points. Word documents facilitate the human services to provide the information regarding their services, links that give other relevant ideologies and updates of the agency. Moreover, notices can be issued to the clients through the application on the educational videos they can watch to meet their needs.
Clients at the same time can be able to raise their concerns and complement for the services they receive. This technology adequately curbs the challenges of transportation and becomes environmentally and financially suitable for the agency (Ginsberg 224). The clients therefore see technology as essential and fundamental in the provision and reception of assistance.
The activities of the human services involve the interconnection with several people inclusive of clients. To meet adequately this function, the use of technology becomes very demanding. Appropriate technology is the database, which can be able to keep records, collecting information and keeping trail of clients.
Similarly, database enables the agency to ease its efforts of collecting, storage, retrieval and reporting of data. By keeping the database accurate and updated, the agency can be able to foster productive working environment and the limitless possibilities that the databases provide.
Report generating applications provide the agency with the relevant need of statistical reports and analysis of its progress. Since the organisation is able to provide the necessary service to its clients of organising itself, keeping trail of its clients and reaching out to the potential clients, it must analyze its progress and performance.
This software enables the agency to report the statistics and other material information of the agency. About this, an analysis of the performance, weaknesses, their client rating and inefficiencies that exist in their services can be dealt with periodically and accordingly.
The reports generated can be used as a measure of their service standards and formulate policies and plans that can be used to liaise with the government on the needs of the clients of the human services.
The incorporation of technology through such application software like databases, Microsoft word, PowerPoint presentation, reporting applications, webcam services and internet provide a means of breaking the agencies barriers.
Although the use of technology portrays that human services organisation can handle their tasks with many efficiencies there exist some problems and weakness with its usage. Despite this, their importance outweighs their demerits.
Works Cited
Gillam, Scott. Human services. New York: Ferguson Pub., 2010. Print.
Ginsberg, Leon H., and Paul R. Keys. New management in human services. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: NASW Press, 1995. Print.