THE IMPACT FACTORS OF VOCATIONAL INTEGRATION AND COMMUNITY INTEGRATION PROCESS OF DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..

Background of the study………………………………………………………………

Statement of the Problem……………………………………………………………..

The Null Hypothesis…………………………………………………………………….

Scope and Limitation of the Study………………………………………………….

Significance of the Study………………………………………………………………

Definition of Terms……………………………………………………………………..

CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

Related Literature: ……………………………………………………………………………………..

Related Studies:

Synthesis:

Conceptual Framework

CHAPTER THREE:  METHODOLOGY

Research Design:

Participants:

Data-gathering Procedures:

Instrumentation:

Statically Treatment Data:

ABSTRACT

THE IMPACT FACTORS OF VOCATIONAL INTEGRATION AND COMMUNITY INTEGRATION PROCESS OF DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

TRAN MINH HAI

The Philippine Women’s University

The University of Labor and Social Affair

The Tuong Lai (Future) project is a long-term project which was established to encourage street children, poor children, working children and children at risk integrating their families and communities with the help of social workers by the Ho Chi Minh City Welfare foundation. They provide free of charge services for disadvantaged teenagers including information exchange; education and vocational training, job placement, English class, entertainment and sports activities. Based on the successful lessons in their process, this thesis aims to find out the impact factors to youth well-being in the concept of Social work. It reflects input from two groups: working teenager (5 cases) and street teenager group (5 cases) who participated in ten in-depth interviews and one group discussion conducted on the development issues contributing to their integration successes. Analysis of commentaries identified 2 main areas are vocational integration services and community integration supports, expressed in strong and weak points. Additionally, a case study approach was undertaken to identify the important roles of social workers and how the social theories were integrated into a research into disadvantaged children in Viet Nam. The project’s conceptual framework was agligned with Viet Nam reality socio-economic context, but in practice, a variety of challenges were identified. Since the valuable outputs of this research, some potential suggestions may be offered for the related stakeholders to help the disadvantaged children in the future.

Chapter one

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Introduction

Within 20 last years, Vietnam has recorded remarkable achievements of reduction in poverty, and the average annual poor rate in the country falling from 58% in 1993 to 14% in 2008. However, the rapid economic development resulted in noticeable disproportion especially in rural and urban areas while the poor rate in urban was about 3%, in rural  about 18%. Attracted by potential opportunities and with hope of earning better, the poor families from the countryside have been migrated to the central big cities. And in many circumstances, they have run into difficulties. Not registered formally, the families do not benefit from social services and their children lack conditions to reach educational activities, entertainments, career, free legal services and medical equipment. In recent years, the progress of urbanization and industrialization makes this situation serious because farmers lost their land and city dwellers lost their home due to infrastructures and other developed projects.

Street teenagers with their families, by themselves or in a group are considered to be one of issues cared about appropriately by society. Recently, scene of street teenagers selling Chewing gum, selling lottery tickets, stealing, polishing shoes, begging, hooking garbage… is not strange to city dwellers. The progress of urbanization strongly happened, resulting in situation that street teenagers appear more, especially in urban areas and big cities. Situation that street teenagers wander and earn their living has become exceptional alarmingly. Many of them have no personal papers such as birth certificate, identity card… Therefore, they are easily victims of every forms’ sweat such as not being made a labor contract, not being guaranteed benefits when working, trespassing on their sex rights, being involved in social evils…

For such a reality, there are many domestic and international social organizations attending to supportive programs or projects such as: making personal papers, helping them to take vocational training course, searching jobs, training life skills, etc. Although encountering a lot of difficulties, they have got many satisfactory results. The social organizations functioning in care of teenagers in difficult situations in general and street teenagers in particular often operate in diversity of models in order to help beneficiaries to integrate in life sustainably. The activities aim to and direct to an output result that is to improve and enhance the quality of life of street teenagers to integrate in their community and society.

Background of the Study

Ho Chi Minh City is a dynamic city in the southeast of Viet Nam, so far in the other contract, what make the imagination of streets children become more and more familiar?

For many reasons, children have to spend much time in the street not only for work or also for fun. This is partially showing the fact that they are standing in front of many bad problems in life. There is no doubt that children who work or live on streets are unaware of several risks in unguided urban life. They get pressures of living expenses and the mental illness that make them “use alcohol or illegal drugs to relieve the stress and to forget painful experiences. Others are trained to become professional beggars. Disabled children may be sold to strangers who force them to beg on streets. Girls seem to be in particular danger as the target of sexual assault and exploitation”. (Duong Kim Hong (2005), Street Children in Viet Nam – Interactions of Old and New Causes in   Growing Economy –p. 3). In addition, in Ho Chi Minh City, the greatest part of children on the street belong to low-income communities, ads up to the phenomenon discrimination aspected to the street teenagers. Their households are quite sizeable and have limited access to health and education services. This prejudice and social stigma build obstacles that make their acceptance and advancement difficult.

Though the situation of street teenagers in Ho Chi Minh is not a new phenomenon, it can be stated that only in relatively recent time, it captured the attention of some of the main involved organizations to lessen negative impact to disadvantaged youth. While many international and local nonprofit organizations providing many support services on both vocational training including of soft and hard skills, some others provide models to achive objectives of community integration, Tuong Lai project from Ho Chi Minh City Welfare Foundation plays important roles to enhance the quality’s life for disadvantaged teenagers.

There are many researchers, officials and social workers who work directly with disadvantaged children in urban areas. There have also been many studies and reports on this issue with various purposes and methods. Despite the depthly considerable interest and activity surrounding service packaged and support models from communities, there remains a lack of research to find out the impact factors to the community integration and vocational integration process of disadvantaged teenagers. It has been recognized that there is no formal paradigm for implementing the social work functions in practice. While there is increasing use of the terms that social work, social worker, vocational integration and community integration in the literature of Sustainable science, many researchers do not explicitly describe the reality impact factors to the supportive services and whether it improved social work activities outcomes. Moreover, published studies often do not report whether the roles of social worker were required, or applicable to their work. This weakens the capacity for critical review of the adaption of social work in practice with disadvantaged teenagers – one type of vulnerable clients. Moreover, the forward support services may face to the existent problems which completely can be avoided if that could be studied previously. All of these challenged indicate a need to review and analyze how social workers effectively supported street children and working children on vocational integration and community integration, and to investigate the solid and ineffectual point of such services packaged through a case study.

Statement of the Problem

The review began by experience researcher in the area of social work. Two research questions were developed prior to achieve the study objectives:

1. What are the main impact factors to the vocational integration and community integration of disadvantaged youth?

2. How is sustainable intervention to disadvantaged youth adapted to Viet Nam context?

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