Analysis of Human Services Roles and Ethics at El Centro Hispano, NC

This essay explores the multifaceted world of human services, focusing on the roles, knowledge, values, and ethical dilemmas encountered by professionals at El Centro Hispano, a community-based organization serving immigrants in Durham, North Carolina. It delves into specific programs like El Refugio, highlighting the knowledge required for effective service, including cultural diversity, education, problem-solving, communication, persuasion, negotiation, and coordination skills. The essay identifies ethical dilemmas such as social and communication challenges arising from cultural differences and mistrust. It emphasizes the importance of ethical codes like confidentiality, cultural humility, and anti-discrimination in navigating these challenges and ensuring equitable service delivery. Ultimately, the essay underscores the significance of human service organizations in elevating living standards and addressing community issues, while also advocating for ethical practices that respect cultural diversity and promote trust.

Running Head: INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN SERVICES
Introduction to Human Services
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INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN SERVICES 2
Introduction
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.

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN SERVICES 3
El Centro Hispano
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.
Roles of Human Service Profession at the El Centro Hispano
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.
El Refugio Program
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.
Knowledge required for the services
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.

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN SERVICES 4
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.

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN SERVICES 5
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.
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.
Ethical Dilemmas
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

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN SERVICES 6
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

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN SERVICES 7
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.
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

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN SERVICES 8
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
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

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN SERVICES 9
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.

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN SERVICES 10
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: www.elcentronc.org