Swgs 6208 - Community Assessment Harlem

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A Social Worker in East Harlem denotes how the closure of Pathmark is “a big thing for our families”, symbolizing how this event has taken a serious toll on the community. Further stating, because of the increased safety levels mostly young white families are the new people living in East Harlem and how they settle spatially is generally between 116th and 109th Street.

Therefore, the more south you go the richer it becomes.

One resident noted, Whole Foods and Starbucks are on the same block with a KFC and McDonalds. This appears to represent a Negative function or dysfunctional social theory, described as the undesirable consequences of an activity or social process that inhibit a society’s ability to adapt or adjust (Kirst-Ashman 2014). Supermarkets per square footage remains one of the highest in the city. However, the closing of Pathmark in East Harlem reduced the option of affordable groceries in East Harlem. Therefore, making the access to Whole Foods not possible for marginalized community members to shop and enjoy healthy food as the prices are out of reach for many neighborhood residents.

Health and Welfare Systems

The chart on page 11, represents many health outcomes based on social and economic conditions in East Harlem. Note, the outliers in “red” highlight. These illustrate the chronic health conditions that are much higher than Manhattan or NYC and are specific to poverty stricken communities. Note, the “green” highlight. This represents prevention and screening outcomes in East Harlem, which may symbolize the sufficient number of social services offered in the community. However, several social workers interviewed agree there is a satisfactory number of social programs but in reality, they lack resources which would be fundamental to addressing completely the needs of the population specifically, affordable housing. Furthermore, they must cope with certain part of the population who opposes the increase of social serves in their neighborhood. Quote from social worker in East Harlem as follows:

I sense that there is this other group of people in the community who want us to stop offering more programs, more services…. These people feel that, if we build more social services, we’re going to attract more people with problems to East Harlem. There is another group in East Harlem who may not want affordable housing, they might not want another social worker agency or a rehab, because these folks feel that these institutions may attract a certain type of population. There is a small contingency of people in an advocacy group that think we’re going to attract more people.

If certain needs of the population cannot be satisfied with the social services currently located in the neighborhood, the residents are going to be forced to seek help elsewhere, outside of East Harlem. The social workers are expressing concern for this, because those in need both don’t have the financial mean to go looking for help elsewhere, and they feel much more comfortable making use of the resources already located in their neighborhood; in other words, people wish to get help in a place familiar to them. With these assumptions in mind it could be argued that part of the sector of social work in East Harlem has ended up in the situation of “involuntary immobility”, theorized by Newman and Wyly (2006).

East Harlem has several available hospitals and nursing facilities: Henry J. Carter, Specialty Hospital & Nursing facility, New York City Health & Hospital, Jewish Home & Hospital, Kravitz Hospital and most notable Mount Sinai Hospital. Other available resources for the community include, Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, six job placement agencies, 14 food banks, nine Head Start locations and ten treatment facilities and twenty plus recovery centers and half-way houses that offer methadone maintenance programs for opioid addiction.

Homeless are a very common sight and they mostly congregate on 125th St (Casey, 2015). There are various associations providing shelter for the homeless and among them there are a few based in East Harlem, like the Center for Urban Community Services, a not-for-profit corporation financed with public donations. The Government of the City of New York regularly updates the list of social services provided in the neighborhood in the East Harlem Community Resource Guide (DOHMH, 2015).

Assessment of Educational Facilities

East Harlem has 58 primary and secondary schools, with 37 public schools, twelve privates, and nine charter schools. The ratings are based on a comparison of test results for all schools in the state. Rating for the 58 schools are as follows, ten schools have ratings of eight, ten schools have rating of five and the balance have a rating of four and below, with 17 schools unrated. Of the nine charter schools in District 3 as of 2017, eight are in Harlem. The public schools in East Harlem have been criticized for decades as being educationally among the worst in the city. By contrast, the charters in East Harlem have been praised or their quality of education, even when compared to charters elsewhere in the nation. Charters are generally free of tuition to attend and have higher expectations for students, which is the reason parents want their children to be admitted. When a school receives more qualified applicants than it has classroom space to admit, it runs a lottery and places everyone who is not admitted on to a waitlist for possible opening later in the year. Access into charter schools is not easy, only 20 percent of children who are eligible by age are enrolled, and that does not count applicants who are denied admission because of lack of room (Brill, 2015).

There are 13 colleges and universities in East Harlem or close by the neighborhood. A big evolution for the social work profession was the relocation of the Hunter College Department of Social Work to East Harlem from their original location Upper East Side in 201. The original building was no longer meeting the needs of the school, it was decided to relocate the headquarters to East Harlem, because this way it could integrate better in the community and could better address the neighborhood’s problems (Zimmer, 2011). As Jacqueline Mondros, the dean of the School of Social Work, explains, “Social work is all about enhancing communities and the people in them. To have a community in which to work, that needs us and wants us, and which we need and want; It is a synergistic moment” (Zimmer, 2011). The board of the school, however, wishes that the students will bring positive changes to the community and not just carry out academic research (Macahulay Honors