Women Center Hart City: Accessibility, Communication, and Responsiveness

Measuring Effectiveness of Human Services
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As a nonprofit organization, Hart City Women's Shelter focuses on offering crisis-based programs by offering secure residential shelter for females and their dependent children undergoing Child Protective Services for a short period. According to Kettner et al. (2017), a program must ensure accessibility, responsiveness, and effective communication to meet the needs of service users to serve the target population effectively. This paper will evaluate the accessibility of Hart City Women's Shelter to its target population, if there is effective communication with the service users, and whether it is responsive to their specific needs.
Accessibility
The program provides services to women from different age brackets with minor children depending on them and under Child Protective Services. However, certain factors limit specific individuals from accessing the program. Among such factors is the program's eligibility criteria, which allows only single mothers earning lower incomes to access the program. This criterion implies that married women or women without children may not access the program. Shan and Sandler (2016) observe that such challenges limit homeless people with severe mental illnesses from accessing the program's services. In this vein, the program presently has a waiting list of up to six months, which adds to its limitations of accessibility for people needing immediate assistance. Also, the cost is a limiting factor since some people may be unable to afford the $60 required per person in a day for the program. Kertesz et al. (2014) argue that many homeless people cannot afford mere expenses and thus cannot access various services, including healthcare.
Communication
The program's effective communication with its service users is critical in addressing their needs. The survey results show that 10% of the service users strongly concur with the excellent responsiveness of the staff to their concerns and questions (Walden University, 2021). However, this data implies there is room to improve concerning communication effectiveness. Moreover, the complaint logs show the complaints of the residents towards staff positions turnover, which can adversely affect effective communication. Also, the residents have reported such issues as bugs in housing units, failure to do repairs, and insufficient food, which shows the program has communication breakdowns with its service users. Improving the program's communication channels, giving timely and transparent information, and addressing users' concerns are vital in enhancing the general program's effectiveness (The Community Toolbox, n.d.-a).
Responsiveness
How the program and the staff respond to the service users' needs determines how it achieves positive results. In this context,...