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
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
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