Question

What are some specific challenges low-income families or those living in poverty face? How can these challenges affect the delivery of human services and our relationship with clients? Why is it important for human services professionals to be aware of class bias or classism?

Answer 1

The first and foremost challenge that the families and individuals living in poverty face is lack of money or the financial resource to meet their basic needs as food, shelter and clothes. The lack of financial resources keep them from accessing other amenities that are essential to live a healthy and quality life. They face difficulty to have access to the human services due to lack of financial resources, transportation facilities, rigidity in their working hours, and due to family responsibilities as looking after the young children.

The basic probem in effective deliverance of human services to the poor class of society is that the issues of.middleclass have been studied extensively, and are generalized for the poor class, who face a totally different set of challenges than the middle income class. They face the problem of getting stigmatized of being lazy or careless when they seek the human services, when, the actual reason for being lazy or careless is that they do not have access to the treatments and services that may require financial resources, this keeps them seeking appropriate interventions that are needed in time. They daily face the challenge to meet their basic needs, and for them the daily stresses and struggles are part of their routine life, even the violence they face in their daily life becomes the part of their normal routine life. They fail to recognize these as issues which is significantly effecting their life in a negative manner.

Human service professionals should be aware of their unconscious bias that they may have towards the individuals living in poverty. This would help the professionals to understand the challenges that are being faced by the people and families living in poverty. Also, it's important for these professionals not to judge the families and individuals living in poverty by the scale of middle income class because the people living in poverty face a different set of problems and challenges. This would also hinder in effective deliverance of human services to the needed.