Purpose of Study
The research topic is “Investigating the scope and effectiveness of services for homeless veterans.” This study explores programs and services offered by different agencies in Houston, Texas area. The motivation to carry out this study is that veterans who return from missions abroad face numerous challenges. One of them is their inability to secure homes for living their lives because of mental and physical health issues and recidivism.
Data Collection Process
The study involved the gathering of views of employees working in three different agencies, including
- Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center,
- Salvation Army Greater Houston Common, and
- Career and Recovery Resources, Inc.
These agencies have different programs and services that are aimed at helping homeless veterans to find accommodation. They have an essential role in assisting veterans who are facing issues and need help.
The participants of the interview are selected using the purposive sampling technique. Each agency was formally requested to assign representatives who would be willing to participate in the interview process. Before interviews were conducted, informed consent forms were duly signed and collected. In this study, a semi-structured interview was used, which included ten questions. Each question was drafted to address different aspects of social services provided by agencies to homeless veterans. Furthermore, some questions collected information about participants.
Interview Sample
It is indicated that the three social services organizations assigned their employees to take part in the interview process. In total, five individuals participated in the study. Two employees from Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center and Salvation Army Greater Houston Common took part in the study. On the other hand, only one employee of Career and Recovery Resources, Inc. participated in the interview process.
Interviewee Details
Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center
Ms. Shelby Lawrence, Program Manager
Mr. Andrew Williams, Program Manager
Salvation Army Greater Houston Common
Ms. Isabella Juan, Senior Social Worker
Ms. Camilla Jose, Senior Social Worker, Health Care
Career and Recovery Resources, Inc.
Mr. Martin Hughes, Program Coordinator
The study participants are experienced employees who are presently working in senior positions in the three selected organizations. Therefore, it could be stated that the findings of the current study are reliable for concluding the role of social work agencies and services in helping homeless veterans.
Findings
What are some of the most gratifying aspects of your job?
All participants were of the view that helping veterans who have sacrificed their happiness for national interests and security is the most gratifying aspect of their job. They see thousands of veterans struggling in their lives, and they need help from others to get their life back on track. It is important to serve them so that their dignity is not hurt. Mr. Williams stated that it is his lifetime achievement to help veterans who struggle to overcome their mental and physical problems and find suitable living accommodations.
What are some of the most pressing issues with providing services to homeless veterans?
Interviewees were of the view that homeless veterans are difficult to manage because they have social, psychological, and substance abuse issues. Every individual needs attention and care depending on their problems. This makes the job challenging and requires a lot of effort and time to gain veterans’ confidence to help them most effectively.
How long have you been employed at the agency?
Ms. Shelby Lawrence = 5 years
Mr. Andrew Williams = 6.5 years
Ms. Isabella Juan = 6 years
Ms. Camilla Jose = 4.5 years
Mr. Martin Hughes = 7 years
What is your educational and professional background?
Ms. Shelby Lawrence = Bachelors, work experience of more than 7 years at different agencies.
Mr. Andrew Williams = College worked as an independent service provider for 4 years.
Ms. Isabella Juan = Bachelors, work experience of more than 10 years at different agencies.
Ms. Camilla Jose = College, work experience of more than 5 years at different agencies.
Mr. Martin Hughes = Bachelors, work experience of more than 7 years at the same agency.
All interviewees have a strong professional background and experience of many years in assisting veterans and those who need help.
What are the most significant challenges for homeless veterans?
Homeless veterans suffer a lot because of their behavioral, psychological, and physical issues. It is also reported that they also have high vulnerability to chronic and acute disease, violent victimization, and drug and alcohol abuse. Furthermore, homeless veterans also get into trouble by getting involved in criminal activities.
What are some of the strengths of homeless veterans?
Homeless veterans have a strong character. They are willing to lead a normal life by getting help. They seek trustable relationships and contribute positively to the peer programs of the agency. Furthermore, families of homeless veterans play an important role in their lives.
Your agency provides health care/housing/counseling services to homeless veterans. What are the additional services homeless veterans need?
Agencies help homeless veterans to find work. They also provide faith-based services to veterans according to their religion and belief.
How do you assess the effectiveness of service programs?
Different benchmarks are used for assessing the effectiveness of service programs, which are listed on this slide.
Reflection
I expected to learn a lot from the research experience. I prepared extensively by reviewing existing studies and their methodologies. This helped me get a good grasp of ideas and concepts relevant to the phenomenon to carry out extensive research. I learned about different data collection techniques and assessed their merits and demerits. I decided to conduct interviews with participants because I believed this technique is useful for collecting first-hand information. However, it was expected to be time-consuming and difficult to implement. This is the reason that only five interviews were conducted. I believe that the sample size could be increased, and a survey questionnaire could be used to conduct future quantitative research.
Personal Experience
My learning has been significant as I have learned about research approaches, methodologies, and techniques useful for conducting primary research. I have also learned about the issues that could affect the research outcome. The insights gained from the study are useful to understand the issues homeless veterans face. Social workers and agencies have a crucial role in helping such individuals find suitable opportunities to overcome their problems and live everyday lives. The findings of this study are useful for veterans as well as they could seek help from agencies.
Reference
Magnusson, E., & Marecek, J. (2015). Doing interview-based qualitative research. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Moderna Company’s Entrepreneurial Climate
Moderna is a pharmaceutical company that was founded in 2010 and has a special focus on mRNA technology and immuno-oncology, infectious, rare, autoimmune, and cardiovascular diseases (Moderna, 2021). The early 2010s were a time during which major innovations and diversification of the pharmaceutical industry began to take place. The past ten years also show high product competition in the industry due to manufacturing-related recalls, much of which is and was fostered by federal regulations (Ball et al., 2018). The policy in the industry continued to become more critical on a national level. 2010 showed a steady increase and decrease in the number of firms within the pharmaceutical manufacturing field, which depicts a highly competitive specialized climate (United States Census Bureau, 2010). Socioeconomic factors are also cited to be highly influential, such as health trends, well-being product demand, or disease occurrence (Lee, 2010).
Additionally, 2010 saw a decrease in the employment of more experienced workers, as employees over 65 were often prone to self-employment (Small Business Administration, 2012). However, early 2010 also made way for 15.5 million jobs in the private sector, with startups being supported by initiatives such as Startup American (Kalil & Rand, 2016). Moderna is based in Massachusetts, which passed the Massachusetts Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Manufacturer Code of Conduct policy just the year before Moderna’s establishment (Sullivan, 2018). This code ensured that companies had to report payments beyond 50 USD, which created further legal responsibilities for Moderna which relied on a large body of working physicians.
Moderna entered the pharmaceutical industry at a competitive and fluctuating time due to socioeconomic factors, evolving industry standards and practices, and policy alterations. Despite this, this is likely to have been the best time for it to have done so. This can be deduced from their steady growth and specialization, resulting in an essential product, one of the COVID-19 vaccines of this year.
References
Ball, G. P., Shah, R., & Wowak, K. D. (2018). Product competition, managerial discretion, and manufacturing recalls in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. Journal of Operations Management, 58, 59-72. Web.
Kalil, T., & Rand, D. (2016). President Obama’s Top ten actions to accelerate American entrepreneurship. The White House President Barack Obama. Web.
Lee, B. (2010). University students’ assessment of entrepreneurial environments [Unpublished master’s thesis]. The University of Nebraska.
Moderna. (2021, February 1). Moderna’s company history. Moderna. Web.
Small Business Administration. (2012). Frequently asked questions about small business. Web.
Sullivan, T. (2018). Massachusetts pharmaceutical and device code of conduct: companies won’t wave to report payments covered by Federal Sunshine Act; gift ban still in place. Policy & Medicine. Web.
United States Census Bureau. (2010). Business dynamics statistics: Establishment age: 1978-2018 [Data set]. Web.
Equal Employment Opportunity Laws
Many Human Resource managers find it difficult to make decisions concerning disabled members of the workforce. Unknowingly to them, any unbiased decision concerning a disabled person be it hiring or promotion, is completely illegal. There are several laws put up by the federal authority to ensure that all organizations observe equal employment of people irrespective of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. the following are the major laws concerning equal employment opportunities (Auxillium West par. 1).
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
In 1992, a law concerning equal employment for all Americans who have qualifications was passed. A person with disability but qualified is one person who has all the job requirements in terms of skills, education and experience and who can perform the job functions with or without accommodation (Auxillium West par. 3).
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
All companies and other institutions containing 15 or more people must abide to this law. It states that no employer has the mandate to discriminate his employees including job applicants in terms of their race, gender, religion, national origin, color, sex etc. the institutions bound by this law include educational institutions, private employers, local governments, State institutions, etc (FIU par 6).
Civil Rights Act of 1991
This law gives the victims of workplace discrimination the right to get compensations in accordance to harm inflicted to them. This includes future losses, emotional harm and other damages that one has been subjected to. Punitive damages are in most cases received by international discrimination victims (FIU par 3).
The Rehabilitation Act
This is a law that calls upon all the employers to ensure that they uphold affirmative action for the disabled. No employer will be allowed to discriminate a job applicant based on his disabled nature (Auxillium West par. 4).
Executive Order 11246
In 1964, President Johnson signed an affirmative action law which stated that all firms that will enter into contract with the executive branch agency whose contract within a period of 12 months amounted to $ 10,000 must ensure that it complied with the affirmative action. This also included companies with more than 50 employees which had one or more covered contracts. The affirmative action plan had to be written down and be updated annually. The plan had to show effort to include minorities and females in positions they didn’t hold before (Auxillium West par. 6).
All these laws are reinforced by certain government institutions like equal employment opportunity committee.
Sears can be cited as the best example for a company which has shown effort in trying to comply with the government’s laws by not discriminating during hiring. Among its workforce of 300,000 people, 20,000 are disabled in a way or another. This strategy has been used by Sears, not as a way to ensure compliance with the ADA but as a company culture which has promoted employee morale, customer base and above all booasted the company’s chances to attain the set goals and objectives (Blanck p4).
Sears implemented the employment of disabled people in 1947 before putting up a selective placement program in 1972 which involved identifying the skills of the disabled workers and placing them in job position that could fit their condition. They have also put up a council on disability issues and also indulge in computer training for the people with disability. In addition to this, the other members of the work fore are given specialized training concerning the ADA compliance. Sears has also formed a special program whose responsibility is to assist in solving ADA related disputes. Finally, Sears participates in several forums that assist in promoting employment of people with disability. A good example is their participation in the Employers’ Committee of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities (Blanck p26).
These are among the strategies taken by Sears to promote workplace accommodation. It is therefore the effort of the management of NL&C to ensure that all workers with disabilities are given not only physical assistance in the general production effort but also mental and emotional assistance. This can be done through educating programs for the disabled and the rest of the work force to increase awareness of the ADA compliance.
References
Auxillium West. “Equal Employment Opportunity Laws.” Legal issues. 2008. Web.
Blanck, D., “Communicating the Americans with Disabilities Act.” University of Iowa. Web.
Florida International University. “Summary of Laws Affecting the Employment Process.”. Web.