Access to rights and services in the Gypsy/Roma community; A social work evaluation on rights-based approach

Purpose: "The general aim of the research is to evaluate the needs, problems and public service expectations of the Gypsy/Roma society and to make sense of the difficulties they experience in accessing basic human rights" Materials and Methods: The methodological tendency of the research is the qualitative method and the purposeful sampling method is used. A total of 26 participants from İzmir province Karşıyaka/Örnekköy, Buca/Göksu and Konak/Tepecik (South) Neighborhoods participated in the research. Semi-structured interview form was applied with in-depth interview technique at the research . MAXQDA 2020 was used to process the data. Findings: By considering the lives of the participants: It has been evaluated on four categories by exploring various themes "Gypsy/Roma Culture", "Living Humanly" and Poverty Pattern (Sheltering, Health, Nutrition, Education, Employment)", "A Society That Is Ignored" and "About Future". Findings that has been obtained in the light of these studies, effort has been given to undertand acknowledging the culture, discrimination, the concept of right, basic human rights, and access to services, political rights, participation and security and expectations from future. Results: It has been noticed that a significant part of the participants accept themselves as "Roma" and mention about that "Gypsy" word implies discrimination and prejudice. It has been seen that Gypsy people cannot provide their basic human needs such as sheltering, employment and education that have been continuing since the past years to day. Looking over the problems encountered, it was noted that the problems that the participants mostly connected with other problems were economic difficulties. It has been observed that homogeneous problems related to poverty and their access to basic human rights are restricted. The basis of their expectations is financial support, vocational trainings and different cultural studies. Keywords: Gypsy/Roma, human rights, social work, need and rights-based approach.