A large amount of budget and a lot of human resources are being put into homeless shelters to attract the homeless, many homeless people unfortunately refuse counsel itself. And although the organs concerned or counseling and protection centers try to...
A large amount of budget and a lot of human resources are being put into homeless shelters to attract the homeless, many homeless people unfortunately refuse counsel itself. And although the organs concerned or counseling and protection centers try to encourage homeless people to enter a homeless shelter, they complain that "we have difficulties actually managing or controlling them since a human rights issue prevents us from compelling them to enter a shelter." According to an official, those who frequently get drunk or who suffer from a mild mental disease may fail to endure a group life and come out again into the street and most credit delinquents avoid entering a shelter because they should disclose their identity there.
For this reason, this study aims at examining service satisfaction and requirements of homeless people who use homeless shelters in Seoul to discover and analyze problems in operating the shelters and present improvement schemes and ultimately to provide basic data for measures for the homeless.
This study obtained the following results.
202 people who lived in a homeless shelter participated in this study and most of them possessed attainments equal to or lower than those of high school graduates. Homeless people have a serious effect on society through economic difficulties caused by unemployment, family disorganization caused by divorce and separation, impersonal treatment, the problem of employment, and the issue of debts. Therefore, if shelters provide beds, meals, counseling, and assistance in employment, and operate programs for health care, personal relationship improvement, social skills training, rehabilitation of alcoholics, self-esteem improvement, and anxiety control systematically to implement governmental policies for the homeless continuously, it is expected to lower the percentage of homeless people remarkably.
On the ground of the results, the following plans can be suggested to improve the operation of homeless shelters.
First, it is necessary to improve treatment by giving respectful treatment to shelter users. As homeless people are found to hesitate to enter a shelter due to the social stigma, it is necessary to improve shelters by keeping their personal information strictly confidential and by giving them respectful treatment so that the shelters can be used as rehabilitation centers for the homeless.
Second, it is necessary to place a proper number of people in a livingroom in order to provide homeless people with a place where they can reconstruct their body and mind comfortably.
For this purpose, it is necessary to increase the number of shelters and implement welfare policies by stages in order to place the proper number of people in a shelter and ultimately to provide a place to secure respect and life at a minimum.
Third, it is necessary to improve homeless peoples' life by improving the quality of meals and medical services. Although the offer of meals is the important part in a shelter, there are difficulties in offering a meal due to insufficient budget and failure in support, resulting in difficulties offering balanced meals. So it is necessary to let a dietitian make out a menu, if possible, in order to provide a balanced diet and to enable homeless people to regain physical strength that declined with the homeless life. It is also necessary to repair and improve outworn feeding facilities in order to provide foods in clean environment; the organs concerned should inspect the feeding facilities regularly or irregularly to provide a hygienic feeding place along with a flexible schedule for meals. In terms of medical services to deal with diseases, it is also necessary to increase health care centers where homeless people can receive treatment through a social medical support system and consequently to provide them with opportunities to cure a chronic disease through continuous treatment and management.
Fourth, it is necessary to specialize a counseling service for homeless people by providing professional counselors and by leaving the door of the counseling room open. Now a shelter provides basic counseling, which is formal. It is therefore necessary to place professional counselors at a shelter and to take measures to assist homeless people to be a healthy working member of society again after continuous counseling. Especially, a shelter should develop and implement a counseling program systematically to help homeless people lead a new life and ultimately make a comeback to normal life with self-confidence.
Finally, it is necessary to develop an employment assistance service program in order to assist homeless people to get a job and find work appropriate for their personal abilities in order to relieve economic difficulties; a shelter should do the best to help them find a job by giving the first priority to the issue. As for assistance in employment, it is also necessary to consider how to solve the problem of debts in order to prevent homeless people from failing to get economic benefits or from being deprived of opportunities to come back to normal life as a credit delinquent.