Human Services Profession and History

Educational Requirements and Professional Standards for the Helping Professions

The human services field is generalist and interdisciplinary in nature, and thus includes different professions with varying functions, levels of education, and requirements for state licensure. Understanding the specific requirements for the various careers within the broader human services profession helps human services students better understand the requirements for their careers of interest.

Human Services Educational Standards

The Council for Standards in Human Service Education (CSHSE) was established in 1979 for the purposes of ensuring excellence in human services education at the associate, baccalaureate, and master’s levels, through the guidance and direction of educational programs offering degrees specifically in human services. The CSHSE developed a set of research-based national standards for curriculum and subject area competencies for human services education degree programs at colleges and universities and provides guidance and oversight to educational programs during the accreditation process.

The CSHSE requires that the curriculum in a human services program cover the following standard content areas: knowledge of the human services field through the understanding of relevant theory, skills, and values of the profession, within the context of the history of the profession; the interaction of human systems; the range and scope of human services delivery systems; information literacy; common program planning and evaluation methods; appropriate client interventions and strategies; the development of students’ skills in interpersonal communication; client-related values and attitudes; and students’ self-development.

The curriculum must also meet the minimum requirements for field experience in a human services agency, as well as illustrate that students are receiving appropriate supervision within their field placement sites (CSHSE, 2019). The CSHSE is the only organization that accredits human services educational programs and also offers continuing education opportunities for human services professionals and educators, networking opportunities, an informational website, and various professional publications.

Human Services Professional Certification

In 2010, the CSHSE and the NOHS in collaboration with the Center for Credentialing & Education (CCE) took a significant step toward the continuing professionalization of the human services profession by developing a voluntary professional certification called the Human Services Board Certified Practitioner (HS-BCP). Human services professionals who hold at least an associate degree in human services (or related field) from a regionally accredited college or university and have 350 hours of post-graduate work in the human services field may be qualified to take the HS-BCP exam (pending an evaluation by the CCE).

The implementation of the HS-BCP certification has moved both the discipline and the profession of human services toward increased professional identity and recognition within the broader helping professional fields by verifying human services practitioners’ attainment of relevant education and practice knowledge. Credentials are maintained through a recertification process that requires 60 hours of continuing education every 5 years, including 6 hours of ethics (CCE, n.d.).

Duties and Functions of a Human Services Professional

The NOHS, as the primary professional organization for human services students, educators, and practitioners, provides a range of benefits to members, including opportunities for professional development as well as networking, advocacy of a human services agenda, and the promotion of professional and organizational identity. The NOHS has also been influential in developing the scope and parameters of human services professional functions and competencies, some of which include the following:

·

· Understanding the nature of human systems, including individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and society, and how each system interacts with others.

·  Understanding conditions that promote or limit optimal functioning of human systems.

·  Selecting, implementing, and evaluating intervention strategies that promote growth and optimal functioning, and that are consistent with the values of the practitioner, client, agency, and human services profession.

·  Developing process skills that enable human services professionals to plan and implement services, including the development of verbal and oral communication skills, interpersonal relationship skills, self-discipline, and time management skills.

The reason why these competencies are so important is because in the human services profession the human services practitioner is the primary tool used to effect change in people’s lives. Thus, to be effective, they must develop a comprehensive and generalist skill set that enables them to work with a wide range of clients, with diverse backgrounds, many of whom are experiencing a wide range of challenges, within varying contexts. For instance, imagine that you have a 40-year-old White mother of two young girls as a client. She has recently left a violent relationship and is currently residing in a transitional housing shelter. Now imagine that you have another client who is a 75-year-old Black veteran with an alcohol addiction who is grieving the recent death of his wife. And finally, imagine that you have a client who is a young Native American teen who was living in foster care and recently ran away from home and is now living on the streets, hasn’t attended school in weeks, and is refusing to return home.

Each of these cases will require that you develop the ability to understand and assess these clients through the lenses of their generational cohort, gender, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, the systems within which each client is operating (e.g., educational, legal, family, vocational), and how each system interacts with the others. You will also need to develop an understanding of and ability to assess conditions that support or limit functioning, such as histories of trauma and abuse, mental and physical health status, educational and employment backgrounds, prior losses, coping styles, and available resources. You will need to become familiar with a range of intervention strategies, including the ability to evaluate what interventions would be appropriate for each client, and then learn how to engage in an ongoing evaluation of the selected interventions’ effectiveness.

Finally, you will need some additional skills to pull all this off, such as good interpersonal skills that enable you to connect with clients who are likely very different from you, who may be resistant to change, or who are emotionally guarded. You will also need to have excellent writing skills so you can succinctly write process notes and enter them on your agency’s electronic records system using your excellent technical skills. Whew! If you can accomplish all of this, you’ll be a true generalist human services professional!

Of course, you won’t be flying by the seat of your pants and making things up as you go. Rather, you will have access to a set of guiding principles, also called theoretical orientations, to guide your decision making and interactions with clients and client systems. The human services discipline is built on theoretical foundations that reflect the values of the profession. Understanding the underlying assumptions of any theoretical framework is important because such assumptions guide practice decisions about the people we work with and society as a whole. For instance, theoretical orientations and frameworks (also called theoretical models) make assumptions about human nature and what motivates people to behave in certain ways under certain conditions.

We rely on theories every day when coming to conclusions about people and events, and why people behave as they do. So if you have ever expressed an opinion about why people don’t work (they are lazy, or they don’t have sufficient opportunities), or why some people commit crimes (they are evil, or they are socialized during a bad childhood), you are espousing a theory and may not even realize it!

Theoretical Frameworks and Approaches Used in Human Services

Theoretical frameworks can serve as the foundational underpinnings of a profession, reflecting its overarching values and guiding principles (such as human services’ commitment to social justice and a belief in a person’s natural capacity for growth). They can also extend into the clinical realm by outlining the most effective ways to help people become emotionally healthy based on some presumptions about what caused them to become emotionally unhealthy in the first place. For instance, if a practitioner embraces a psychoanalytic perspective that holds to the assumption that early childhood experiences influence adult motivation to behave in certain ways, then counseling sessions will likely focus on the client’s childhood. But if the practitioner embraces a cognitive behavioral approach, which focuses on behavioral reinforcements and thinking patterns, then the focus of counseling will likely be on how the client frames and interprets their life experiences.

All of this information about theoretical frameworks and approaches raises the question of what theories tend to be used the most in the human services discipline—both as theoretical foundations (or underpinnings) for the profession, as well as those that guide practice. When considering the various theories of human behavior and social dynamics, it is important to note that theories can be either descriptive (e.g., describing a range of child behaviors), or prescriptive (e.g., determining which behaviors in children are normative and healthy, and which ones are not). A theory may begin by merely describing certain phenomena related to how people think, feel, and behave, but in time, as the theory develops, it may become more prescriptive in the sense that certain determinations are made by the theorists with regard to what is normative and healthy versus what is maladaptive.

It is also important to remember that culture and history often affect what is considered normative thinking and behavior. For instance, 100 years ago if a woman chose to remain single and not have children so she could focus on her career goals, she likely would have been considered mentally ill. A commoncriticism of the major theories of human behavior is that they are based on Western cultural values, and thus the behaviors deemed normative and healthy are often culturally prescribed and not necessarily representative or reflective of non-Western cultures. For instance, is it appropriate to apply Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of human behavior, which was developed from his work with high-society women in the Victorian era, to individuals of a Masai tribe in Kenya? What about using a Western-based theory of parenting with parents from an indigenous culture in South America?

Theories of human behavior used in the human services must reflect the values and guiding principles of the profession and also the range of human experiences, which supports the evaluation and assessment of clients in context. Important areas of context include personal characteristics, such as age, race and ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender and gender identity, geographical region, health status, socioeconomic status, and religion. Context involving social characteristics is important as well, such as the economy, political culture, various laws, the educational system, the health care system, racial oppression, privilege, gender bias, and any other broader social dynamic that may have an impact (even a distant one) on an individual’s life.

The theoretical frameworks and approaches most commonly used within the human services discipline evaluate and assess clients in the context of their various personal and environmental systems, while also considering the transactional relationship between clients and their various systems. Consider this case example:

A woman in her 40s is feeling rather depressed. She spends her first counseling session describing a fear that her children will be killed. She explains how she is so afraid of bullets coming through her walls and windows that she doesn’t allow her children to watch television in the living room. She never allows her children to play outside and worries constantly when they are at school. She admits that she has not slept well in weeks, and she has difficulty feeling anything other than sadness and despair.

Would you consider this woman mentally ill? Paranoid, perhaps? Correctly assessing her mental state does not depend solely on her thinking patterns and behavior, but on the context of her thinking and behavioral patterns, including her various experiences within her environment. If this woman lived in an extremely safe, gate-guarded community where no crimes had been reported in decades, then an assessment of some form of paranoia might be appropriate. But what if she lived in a high-crime neighborhood, where “drive-by” shootings were a daily occurrence? What if you learned that her neighbor’s children were recently shot and killed while watching television in their living room? What about her economic level, the relationship between her, her neighborhood, and local law enforcement? What about the relationship between her children and their school? Her thinking and behavioral patterns do not seem as bizarre when considered within the context of the various systems in which she is operating; rather, it appears as though she is responding and adapting to her various social systems in quite adaptive ways!

Theoretical Frameworks Based on General Systems Theory

General systems theory is a foundational framework used in the human services discipline because it reflects these systemic interactions. General systems theory is based on the premise that various elements in an environment interact with one another, and that this interaction (or transaction) has an impact on all elements or components involved. This presumption has certain implications for the hard sciences such as ecology and physics, but when applied to the social environment, its implications involve the dynamic and interactive relationship between environmental elements (such as one’s family, friends, neighborhood, and gender, as well as broader social elements, such as religion, culture, one’s ethnic background, politics, and the economy) and an individual’s thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior.

The systems within which we operate influence not just our thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, but our sense of identity as well. Consider how you might respond if someone asked you who you were. You might describe yourself as a female college student who is married, who has two high school-aged children, and who attends church on a regular basis. You might further describe yourself as an active online blogger from a second-generation Italian Catholic family who loves to run. On further questioning you might explain that your parents are older, and you have been attempting to help them find alternate housing that can assist them with their extensive medical needs. You might describe the current problems you’re having with your teenage daughter, who was recently caught with drugs by her high school’s police officer and has been referred to drug court.

Whether you realize it or not, you have shared that you are interacting with the following environmental and social systems: family, friends, neighborhood, social media, Italian American culture, Catholicism, gender, marriage, adolescence, the sports community, the medical community, the school system, and the criminal justice system. Your interactions with each of these systems is influenced by your expectations of these systems and their expectations of you. For instance, what are your expectations of your college professors? Your family? The Catholic Church? And what about what is expected of you as a college student? What is expected of you as a woman? As a wife? As a Catholic? What about the expectations of you as a married woman who is Catholic? What about the expectations of your family within the Italian American Catholic community? As you attempt to focus on your academic studies, do these various systems offer support or added pressure? If you went to counseling, would it be helpful for the practitioner to understand what it means to be a member of a large, Catholic, Italian American family? Would it be helpful for your therapist to understand what it means to be in college when married with teen daughters and aging parents?

The focus on the transactional exchanges between individuals and their social environment is what distinguishes the field of human services from other fields such as psychology and psychiatry (which tend to take a more intrinsic view of clients), although recently systems theory has gained increasing attention in these disciplines as well. Several theoretical frameworks and approaches have evolved in the last several decades that are based on general systems theory and thus capture this reciprocal relationship between individuals and their social environment and broader social systems, including Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, the ecosystems perspective, and a practice orientation called the person-in-environment approach. Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979) developed the ecological systems theory, which conceptualizes an individual’s environment as four expanding spheres, each with increasing levels of interaction with the individual. The microsystem includes one’s family, the mesosystem (or mezzosystem) includes elements such as one’s neighborhood and school, the exosystem includes elements such as the government, and the macrosystem includes elements such as one’s broader culture. The primary principle of Bronfenbrenner’s theory is that individuals can best be understood when evaluated in the context of their relationships with the various systems in their lives, and understanding the nature of these reciprocal relationships will aid in understanding the individual holistically.

Similar to Bronfenbrenner’s theory is the ecosystems theory, which conceptualizes an individual’s various environmental systems as overlapping concentric circles, indicating the reciprocal exchange between a person and various environmental systems. Although there is no official recognition of varying levels of systems in ecosystems theory (from micro to macro), the basic concept is very similar to Bronfenbrenner’s theory.

The person-in-environment (PIE) approach is often used as a basic orientation in practice because it encourages practitioners to evaluate individuals within the context of their environment. Clients are evaluated on a micro level (i.e., intra- and interpersonal relationships and family dynamics) and on a macro (or societal) level (i.e., the client is a Black male youth who experiences significant cultural and racial oppression). It is important to note that these theories do not presume that individuals are necessarily aware of the various systems they operate within, even if they are actively interacting with them. In fact, effective human services professionals will help their clients increase their personal awareness of the existence of these systems and how they are currently operating within them (i.e., the nature of reciprocity). It is through this awareness that clients increase their level of empowerment within their environment and consequently in all aspects of their life.

Self-Actualization and Strengths-Based Frameworks

Other theories that can help human services professionals better understand why people behave as they do come from the positive psychology movement, which focuses on people’s strengths rather than viewing people from a pathological perspective. Abraham Maslow (1954) developed a theoretical model focusing on needs motivation, theorizing that people self-actualize naturally, but are motivated to get their most basic physiological needs met first (e.g., food and oxygen) before they are motivated to meet their higher-level needs.

According to Maslow, most people would find it difficult to focus on higher-level needs related to self-esteem if they were starving or had no place to sleep at night. Maslow’s theory suggests that thoughts of self-esteem and self-actualization quickly take a back seat to worries about mere survival. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory can assist human services professionals in recognizing a client’s need to prioritize more pressing needs over others and can also explain why clients in crisis may appear to resist attempts to help them gain insight into their situations, choosing instead to focus on more basic needs. Many people were criticized during the 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic for hoarding toilet paper despite no reports of disruptions in the toilet paper supply chain, resulting in shortages lasting for months. And yet, evaluated through the lens of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory, this seemingly irrational behavior may make sense since toilet paper is a very basic need for many Americans and hoarding it may have been reflective of people’s fears that the pandemic would prohibit them from getting their basic needs met. The strengths perspective is another theoretical approach commonly used in the human services field because it encourages the practitioner to recognize and promote a client’s strengths rather than focusing on their deficits. The strengths perspective also presumes a client’s ability to solve their own problems through the development of self- sufficiency skills and self-determination. Although there are several contributors to the strengths perspective approach, Dennis Saleebey, a social work professor at the University of Chicago, is often attributed with the development of the strengths-based perspective in social work practice. Saleebey (1996) developed several guiding principles for practitioners that promote client empowerment, including recognizing that all clients

1. have resources available to them, both within themselves and their communities;

1. are members of the community and as such are entitled to respect and dignity;

1. are resilient by nature and have the potential to grow and heal in the face of crisis and adversity;

1. need to be in relationships with others in order to self-actualize; and

1. have the right to their own perception of their problems, even if this perception isn’t held by the practitioner.

1. Sullivan (1992) was one of the first theorists to apply a strengths-based approach to practice with clients experiencing chronic mental illness, where practitioners encouraged clients to recognize and develop their own personal strengths and abilities. This was a revolutionary approach since the prevailing approach to working with the chronically mentally ill population was based on a medical model where clients are viewed as sick and in need of a cure. Sullivan asserted that by redefining the problem and focusing on a clients’ existing strengths and abilities rather than on their deficits, treatment goals were more consistent with the goals of early mental health reformers who sought to remove treatment barriers by promoting respectful, compassionate, and comprehensive care of the mentally ill.

1. In the human services field, using strengths-based approaches is empowering for the practitioner and clients because we aren’t coming into their lives presuming that they are sick and we are the experts. Rather, we spend as much time looking for strengths as we do problems. Strengths-based approaches also enable us to partner with our clients in a way that encourages them to take more ownership over their journey toward increased self-sufficiency and more optimal functioning.

Multicultural and Diversity Perspectives

The United States is racially diverse, particularly in the more highly populated cities in the country, such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Such diversity offers many advantages, particularly in the areas of an interesting blend of cultural activities and food. But racial diversity can also lead to conflict, oppression, marginalization, and social injustice, particularly when various cultural traditions conflict with or are misunderstood by the majority culture. Research on why so many White working-class men voted for Donald Trump for president in 2016, when many had previously identified as Democrats, found that many expressed concerns about increasing multiculturalism and they worried that they were losing their place in the social hierarchy—a phenomenon called cultural backlash (Cox et al. 2017; Inglehart & Norris, 2016).

Multicultural human services practice emphasizes the importance of seeing people and communities as having unique cultures, ideologies, worldviews, and life experiences (Sue et al. 2015). Human services practitioners understand the unique experiences of their clients and the communities within which they live, particularly clients who are members of historically marginalized groups. From an educational perspective, multicultural human services focuses on cross-cultural training, cultural competence, cultural sensitivity, and ethnic relations, including teaching about the nature and impact of White privilege (Akintayo et al. 2018).

But, why do we need to use a multicultural lens? Aren’t we all human? Aren’t we all “one”? I mean, shouldn’t we be striving to be “color blind” and equal? The “we’re all members of the human race” and the “I don’t see color” narratives may sound good on the surface, but they’re actually quite dangerous because they negate the histories of oppression, discrimination, and disenfranchisement of many groups of people in the United States. These narratives are also often based on the premise that everyone in the country has an equal chance for success. The reality is that we do not have a ‘level playing field’ in the United States. Some subpopulations—racial and ethnic minorities; indigenous people; religious minorities; immigrants; sexual minorities; women, particularly women of color; people with physical and intellectual disabilities; and other disadvantaged populations—have a long history of disparate treatment. Some examples include overt and covert racial discrimination, gender bias, ageism, ableism, disparate criminal justice laws, forced displacement, and environmental injustice.

I have integrated multicultural perspectives and theories throughout this book, using them as lenses to explore the roles and functions of human services professionals and the clients they serve. I’ve also included special sections within each chapter to highlight and more deeply explore social problems and the populations they impact, such as how White privilege (individual and systemic) has impacted diverse populations, or how people of color have figured prominently among leaders in the fight for social justice, reflecting the resiliency and strength of various marginalized populations. I do both — infuse and highlight content—as a way of calling attention to historic and current systemic injustice and the impact these injustices have on diverse populations. My goal is also to highlight the resiliency and many other strengths of historically marginalized people who have far too often been portrayed solely from a deficit perspective.

A Word About Terminology

Word are important because they reflect meaning and intent. For this reason, I have taken a lot of care in the selection of terminology used in this book. For instance, when selecting labels to describe various populations, I have deferred to the preferences of the populations themselves. When exploring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) issues, I’ve used terminology recommended in GLAAD’s Media Reference Guide (GLAAD, 2016). I’ve also consulted surveys of target populations to ensure I am using their preferred terminology, such as a a recent poll that found that only 2% of the U.S. Hispanic population preferred the term Latinx (ThinkNow, 2020). Thus, despite the popularity of this label in academic circles, based on the growing controversy surrounding its use, I will be using either Hispanic or Latina/o depending on use and context.

I use the term people of color when my goal is to use inclusive language in reference to a broad range of racial and ethnic minority populations, but I use more specific terminology when I am referring to a particular group. Throughout the book I use the term Black rather than African American in response to the longtime push by Black scholars and advocates (Tharps, 2014). Additionally, I am following the lead of the Brookings Institution and capitalizing the “B” in Black as an act of racial respect in response to centuries of White Americans refusing to capitalize any reference to the Black population out of sense of superiority (Lanham & Liu, 2019).

When referencing indigenous populations, I use the most specific terminology possible. I use the term Native American in reference to broader indigenous populations in the continental United States, Alaska Natives when referencing indigenous populations in the state of Alaska, and Native Hawaiian and/or other Pacific Islanders when referencing indigenous populations in Hawaii, Tonga, the Marshall Islands, and Fiji.

Words and terminology are important and meaningful. They can be used to bring people together or divide them. My goal is to be specific and inclusive in my choice of words, respecting the wishes of the populations I am writing about, if there is a consensus and an authoritative reference. Despite my thoughtful approach though, there is bound to be some controversy surrounding the words I and other authors use to describe people, communities, and movements, particularly when so many of the people being written about in books like this one have been subject to labels specifically designed to harm them for so many years. It is important to me that the readers of this book know that I have invested time and energy in being respectful in my choice of words, and yet, if I get it wrong, please reach out and let me know.

Conclusion

The human services profession is generalist, meaning that we work with a wide range of people experiencing a wide range of challenges. Human services professionals practice in numerous settings, such as schools, hospitals, advocacy organizations, faith-based agencies, government agencies, hospices, prisons, and police departments, as well as in private practice if they have advanced degrees and an appropriate professional license. The nature of human services interventions is wholly dependent on the specific practice setting delivering the services. In other words, intervention strategies and approaches are contextually driven. For instance, let’s assume you work with children in a school setting and your colleague works with children in a hospice setting. Certainly, there will be some similarities, particularly if the children are in a similar age range, but for the most part your jobs will be quite different, utilizing different skill sets and intervention strategies to deal with significantly different psychosocial issues.

It would be difficult to present an exhaustive list of practice settings due to the broad and often very general nature of the human services profession. Sometimes practice settings target specific social issues (i.e., domestic violence, homelessness, child abuse), and sometimes a specific target population is the focus (i.e., older adults, the chronically mentally ill), and sometimes practice settings may target a specific area of specialty (i.e., grief and loss, marriage and family). Regardless of how we choose to categorize the various fields within human services, it is imperative that this career be examined and explored contextually in order to accurately explore the nature of the work performed by human services professionals, the range of psychosocial issues experienced among various client populations, and the career opportunities available to human services professionals, within each practice setting.

For the purposes of this book, the roles, skills, and functions of human services professionals are explored in the context of particular practice settings, as well as areas of specialization within the generalist human services field—general enough to cover as many functions and settings as possible within the field of human services but narrow enough to be descriptively meaningful. The role of the human services professional is examined by exploring the history of the practice setting, the range of clients served, the psychosocial issues most commonly encountered, the modes of service delivery, the nature of case management, the level of practice (e.g., micro, mezzo, or macro), and the most common generalist intervention strategies used within a particular area. The practice settings explored in this book are child and youth services; aging; mental health; housing; health care and hospice; schools; faith-based agencies and spirituality; violence, victim advocacy, and corrections; and international practice.

Summary

·

· A working definition of the human services professional is developed that identifies key reasons why people may need to use a human services professional. The nature of the human services profession was explored, providing comparisons and distinctive aspects of the human services profession compared to other helping fields. A range of social problems and individual challenges that may lead to people needing the services of a human services professional is explored. The nature of vulnerability and how social conditions often render some populations more at risk of needing assistance to overcome various challenges are also explored.

·  The role of the Council on Standards for Human Service Education (CSHSE) and the National Organization for Human Services (NOHS) is described. The function and purpose of the professional organizations that monitor and support the human services profession, including educational standards, state licensure, and professional certification, are also explored.

·  The rationale for the scope and parameters of human services professional functions and competencies is described. The roles, functions, and scope of human services professionals engaging in practice on micro and macro levels are described.

·  Key theoretical frameworks used in the human services discipline to real scenarios are applied. The foundational theoretical approaches most often used in the human services discipline, including systems theory, self-actualizing, and strengths-based approaches, are explored.

·  An introduction to multicultural and diversity perspectives is provided with a particular focus on the importance of multicultural training and education related to cultural competence, cultural sensitivity, and ethnic relations, including teaching about the nature and impact of White privilege.

·  Clarification on terminology used in the book provides an important basis for understanding the importance of words and labels, particularly when they apply to at-risk populations that have been subjected to historic and current marginalization and oppression. Identifying the rationale for terminology used in the book reflects efforts taken by the author to be sensitive to and help diminish the stigmatization associated with certain populations and social problems.