The Unspoken Issue of Poverty in America
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Poverty has plagued American society for decades and programs continue to be developed to aid people suffering from it. A 2004 estimate by the US Census Bureau determined that 35.9 million Americans were living in poverty the previous year. Among them were 12.9 million children. Poverty’s greatest effects are felt by the innocent children who have to grow up in poverty-stricken families without adequate access to food, shelter, and/or health care. To make matters even worse, research has shown that people who grow up in poverty-stricken families tend to raise their own children in poverty. Many different strategies have been used to deal with poverty. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s involved the creation of new, and expansion of old, programs designed to drag families suffering from poverty out from their situations into more fortunate ones. City slums were destroyed and educational and health programs were created to help families build new lives (Burger, Youkeles, 2004). Many of the 1960s programs are still in place and continue their mission to help families out of poverty. Obviously, the Great Society programs failed to achieve their goal and poverty continues to be a major problem in the United States. New social programs have been created, but they, along with the older programs have been overburdened with huge caseloads of people suffering from poverty. An assumption that is frequently made about poverty is that its elimination would el
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organizations do not always fill the gap left by the government when it comes to poverty assistance. Many only serve those who fit in certain targeted groups or who practice certain religions, thus depriving many of the neediest and continuing the cycle of poverty in some of nation’s poorest communities. Child abuse, child neglect, poor health care, and poor education will therefore continue to be problems in these communities. Health and human service workers have an obligation to help their clientele while abiding by laws and following the spirit and purpose of the organizations for which they are working. Services that are no provided delicately can cause the poor to suffer further, meaning that the health and human service workers have failed to do their jobs as advocates for social justice (Burer, Youkeles, 2004). Because of this, health and human service workers must put their priorities and obligations in the correct order and make sure that they follow the laws and work toward the goal of their organizations while continuing to advocate for the people they are serving.
A good example of the kind of situation where a health and human service worker needs to be an advocate for the people she is serving relates to a
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Approximate Word count = 1254
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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