Outreach Chicago is an agency addressing homeless people and individuals in various areas in Chicago, Illinois. The services realized by the agency are providing nutritional bag lunches, personal hygiene items, new or lightly worn clothes, and school supplies for low-income students, families, and veterans (Outreach Chicago, 2022). To examine the needs of homeless and low-income individuals, the information provided in peer-reviewed articles was estimated. For instance, Sommer et al. (2020) emphasized the need for women and teenage girls to have a safe, clean area to cope with menstruation. It was proved that not only the difficulties are connected with bathing and laundering, but also with developing gynecological health issues, urinary tract infections, and yeast infections (Sommer et al., 2020). Thus, personal hygiene is essential for low-income and homeless women and adolescent girls to take proper care of their female health.
Another research underlined that homeless people are most of the time staying out of reach by the services as the latter focus on veterans and people with mental illnesses. Wusinich et al. (2019) state that homeless people have a substantial number of unpleasant experiences with shelters where they can stay at night. Even though state services call some low-income and homeless people hard to reach, the latter avoid drop-in center services because of the safety issues and the regulations of city shelters (Wusinich et al., 2019). Participants of the study claimed they knew where to find food but, with personal hygiene products, it was sometimes harder (Wusinich et al., 2020). Mental health issues are undertreated and developed due to the increased amount of stress homeless people have. Thus, this category of individuals lacks hygiene products and healthcare services that are underprovided by the state and local services.
Young homeless people have different needs compared to adults, and their perceptions of help should be assessed too. Pedersen et al. (2018), in their research, studied the necessities young individuals lack in housing and mental health issues. Young people claimed they had needs for safe housing, drug and alcohol supply, and case management services. The researchers also identified that individuals having behavioral issues do not directly seek help for it which means teenagers do not recognize the possible deviations they have developed. Professionals should work with adolescents to identify the disorders and help teenagers manage them.
For the qualitative research proposed on Outreach Chicago, systematic sampling, and purposive sampling could be used for the identification of the participants. Systematic sampling is appropriate as it takes members from a bigger population group with a fixed periodic interval. This sampling method helps choose participants for the interview out of all people that received help from Outreach Chicago. Purposive sampling may be useful as the researcher have to use his judgments to choose participants for the study. Purposive sampling might be better for qualitative research with the use of the interview method as it is selective and based on the researcher’s knowledge of the process. Using this sampling, it is also easier to exclude irrelevant or inadequate responses from the study. As mentioned before, validity and reliability are hard to calculate in qualitative research, though it could be done partly with the help of purposive sampling.
References
Outreach Chicago. About us. Web.
Pedersen, E. R., Tucker, J. S., Klein, D. J., & Parast, L. (2018). Perceived need and receipt of behavioral health services at drop‐in centers among homeless youth. Health services research, 53(6), 4609-4628. Web.
Sommer, M., Gruer, C., Smith, R. C., Maroko, A., & Hopper, K. (2020). Menstruation and homelessness: Challenges faced living in shelters and on the street in New York City. Health & Place, 66, 102431. Web.
Wusinich, C., Bond, L., Nathanson, A., & Padgett, D. K. (2019). “If you’re gonna help me, help me”: Barriers to housing among unsheltered homeless adults. Evaluation and Program Planning, 76, 101673. Web.