Human Services Research Paper
“What Is Human Services?”
Daniel J. Lyons
University of Phoenix
BSHS/302 Intro to Human Services
Kristie Hilton
January 10, 2011
What Is Human Services?
The field of Human Services in today’s society plays a very important role that has evolved over time to help people of all ages, races, and gender that cannot meet the basic needs to live a sustainable life. In order for one to understand how human services have become such an important part of society, one must understand the basic nature and purpose of the human services practice. This paper will discuss the goal of the human services field as well as the history of the practice. Professionals in the human services field all practice common intervention strategies and must meet …show more content…
certain ethical standards. All of this information will help one to understand what human services are.
Even though human services have just started to develop professionally in the past century, the practice of helping others can be traced back to Biblical times (Martin, 2007, p. 21). The feudal system of the middle ages allowed lords to provide serfs, the lower class of the middle ages, with a job and a small amount of land. After populations grew, England developed “poor laws”. According to Martin (2007, p. 23) “England passed several relief laws during the mid 1500s through early 1600s, which set forth guidelines for dealing with the poor.” These laws allowed city officials to determine whether people were considered worthy or unworthy poor. By the end of the 19th century, formal handling of helping the poor and disabled began to develop. The first of these was the Charity Organization Societies and was created in New York City in 1877 (Martin, 2007, p. 26). After several policies and events in America, “the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was created as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare on April 11, 1953 (Department of Health and Human Services, 2006, p. 219). This part of our federal government is still the department that handles human services today.
In life there are certain basic needs that every human must acquire to sustain normal living. Some of these basic needs are food, shelter, health, love, and protection. Sometimes people are not able to meet these basic needs on their own or with the resources they have. There can be several reasons for this such as a physical or mental disability, or some kind of history or trauma. The basic goal of the human service profession is to help provide people with the help they need to meet these basic needs. Some people may need permanent help, but others need the professional and financial support to lead them in the right direction.
The human services field is very broad and provides services for people who have mental health issues, drug and alcohol addictions, women, children or even men who have suffered from some kind of abuse in their lives, and several other types of people who cannot meet their basic needs.
The methods of practice differ in each situation, but they are similar in preparation. Practitioners must first make an evaluation or assessment of their client. This process take’s patience and practitioners must be able to listen actively to their client with no distractions and without any preconceived notions of what the speaker is saying (Martin, 2007, p. 47). After a practitioner makes a clinical assessment, they can decide on what intervention strategy to use with a client. The Task-Centered Approach is an example of one intervention strategy that a counselor may use. This strategy helps clients who think they are powerless over simple challenges caused by psychosocial problems and allows counselors help define these challenges and set small, agreed upon goals with clients to help them increase self-esteem (Martin, 2007, p. 55). Reframing is another intervention strategy. This strategy helps clients look at the different perspectives of a situation instead of only the negative. Sometimes people hesitate to act on a situation because of the viewpoint that it will always result in a negative outcome. An opposite approach to this strategy would be emotional regulation. Some people do not …show more content…
hesitate at all to act on their emotions, and this causes serious problems for them. Helping a client to sit with their emotions instead of immediately acting on them is emotional regulation (Martin, 2007, p. 58).
A human service practitioner faces another task other than trying to help their client meet his or her basic needs.
Any practitioner must consider the ethical implications of their services. Moral values and one’s own emotions can sometimes clash and cause human beings to act on impulses. This cannot be the case for someone who is a professional in the human services field. According to Clifford and Royce (2008, p. 17), ethical dilemmas need to be actively discussed and require careful consideration. Human services practitioners must discuss with their clients the importance of informed consent, confidentiality, and the limits of confidentiality before any other discussions can occur (Martin, 2007, p. 38). These are very important pieces of the ethical standards human service practitioners must follow. All information between a practitioner and client must be kept confidential unless the practitioner believes this information proves their client may be in danger of hurting someone else or his or her own self. The practitioner has to make an ethical decision regarding whether or not the limit of confidentiality has been reached. A practitioner cannot engage in any outside relationship with the client, either. This would be a serious violation for any involved in the human services
profession.
In conclusion, the field of human services is a broad but vital piece of modern society that is available to help those individuals who have lost all other types of support and cannot meet their basic human needs. The history of the human services field is short, but the idea of helping those less fortunate has been part of the earliest societies. Professionals in the field of human services have several different intervention strategies at their hand but must decide how to help each client after they have made a clinical assessment. Any professional in the field of human services has a strict duty to follow ethical standards and understand when to follow the ethical codes considered. Not everyone may consider a career in human services, but the one’s who do are helping the less fortunate people in our society that have no one else.
Clifford, D., & Royce, M. (2008). Equality, Diversity, Ethics and Management in Social Work Education. Social Work Education, 27(1), 3-18. doi:10.1080/02615470601141342
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES. (2006). United States Government Manual, 218. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Martin, M. E. (2007). Introduction to human services: through the eys of practice settings. [University of Phoenix Custom Edition e-Text]. : Allyn & Bacon, Inc.. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, BSHS302 website.
Daniel J. Lyons
University of Phoenix
BSHS/302 Intro to Human Services
Kristie Hilton
January 10, 2011
What Is Human Services?
The field of Human Services in today’s society plays a very important role that has evolved over time to help people of all ages, races, and gender that cannot meet the basic needs to live a sustainable life. In order for one to understand how human services have become such an important part of society, one must understand the basic nature and purpose of the human services practice. This paper will discuss the goal of the human services field as well as the history of the practice. Professionals in the human services field all practice common intervention strategies and must meet …show more content…
certain ethical standards. All of this information will help one to understand what human services are.
Even though human services have just started to develop professionally in the past century, the practice of helping others can be traced back to Biblical times (Martin, 2007, p. 21). The feudal system of the middle ages allowed lords to provide serfs, the lower class of the middle ages, with a job and a small amount of land. After populations grew, England developed “poor laws”. According to Martin (2007, p. 23) “England passed several relief laws during the mid 1500s through early 1600s, which set forth guidelines for dealing with the poor.” These laws allowed city officials to determine whether people were considered worthy or unworthy poor. By the end of the 19th century, formal handling of helping the poor and disabled began to develop. The first of these was the Charity Organization Societies and was created in New York City in 1877 (Martin, 2007, p. 26). After several policies and events in America, “the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was created as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare on April 11, 1953 (Department of Health and Human Services, 2006, p. 219). This part of our federal government is still the department that handles human services today.
In life there are certain basic needs that every human must acquire to sustain normal living. Some of these basic needs are food, shelter, health, love, and protection. Sometimes people are not able to meet these basic needs on their own or with the resources they have. There can be several reasons for this such as a physical or mental disability, or some kind of history or trauma. The basic goal of the human service profession is to help provide people with the help they need to meet these basic needs. Some people may need permanent help, but others need the professional and financial support to lead them in the right direction.
The human services field is very broad and provides services for people who have mental health issues, drug and alcohol addictions, women, children or even men who have suffered from some kind of abuse in their lives, and several other types of people who cannot meet their basic needs.
The methods of practice differ in each situation, but they are similar in preparation. Practitioners must first make an evaluation or assessment of their client. This process take’s patience and practitioners must be able to listen actively to their client with no distractions and without any preconceived notions of what the speaker is saying (Martin, 2007, p. 47). After a practitioner makes a clinical assessment, they can decide on what intervention strategy to use with a client. The Task-Centered Approach is an example of one intervention strategy that a counselor may use. This strategy helps clients who think they are powerless over simple challenges caused by psychosocial problems and allows counselors help define these challenges and set small, agreed upon goals with clients to help them increase self-esteem (Martin, 2007, p. 55). Reframing is another intervention strategy. This strategy helps clients look at the different perspectives of a situation instead of only the negative. Sometimes people hesitate to act on a situation because of the viewpoint that it will always result in a negative outcome. An opposite approach to this strategy would be emotional regulation. Some people do not …show more content…
hesitate at all to act on their emotions, and this causes serious problems for them. Helping a client to sit with their emotions instead of immediately acting on them is emotional regulation (Martin, 2007, p. 58).
A human service practitioner faces another task other than trying to help their client meet his or her basic needs.
Any practitioner must consider the ethical implications of their services. Moral values and one’s own emotions can sometimes clash and cause human beings to act on impulses. This cannot be the case for someone who is a professional in the human services field. According to Clifford and Royce (2008, p. 17), ethical dilemmas need to be actively discussed and require careful consideration. Human services practitioners must discuss with their clients the importance of informed consent, confidentiality, and the limits of confidentiality before any other discussions can occur (Martin, 2007, p. 38). These are very important pieces of the ethical standards human service practitioners must follow. All information between a practitioner and client must be kept confidential unless the practitioner believes this information proves their client may be in danger of hurting someone else or his or her own self. The practitioner has to make an ethical decision regarding whether or not the limit of confidentiality has been reached. A practitioner cannot engage in any outside relationship with the client, either. This would be a serious violation for any involved in the human services
profession.
In conclusion, the field of human services is a broad but vital piece of modern society that is available to help those individuals who have lost all other types of support and cannot meet their basic human needs. The history of the human services field is short, but the idea of helping those less fortunate has been part of the earliest societies. Professionals in the field of human services have several different intervention strategies at their hand but must decide how to help each client after they have made a clinical assessment. Any professional in the field of human services has a strict duty to follow ethical standards and understand when to follow the ethical codes considered. Not everyone may consider a career in human services, but the one’s who do are helping the less fortunate people in our society that have no one else.
Clifford, D., & Royce, M. (2008). Equality, Diversity, Ethics and Management in Social Work Education. Social Work Education, 27(1), 3-18. doi:10.1080/02615470601141342
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES. (2006). United States Government Manual, 218. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Martin, M. E. (2007). Introduction to human services: through the eys of practice settings. [University of Phoenix Custom Edition e-Text]. : Allyn & Bacon, Inc.. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, BSHS302 website.