HMS 102: Values of Human Services

In At Risk, Karen J. Swift and Marilyn Callahan examine risk and risk assessment in the context of professional practice in child protection, social work, and other human services. They argue that the tools, technologies, and practices used to measure risk to the individual have gone unquestioned and unstudied and that current methods of risk assessment may be distorting the principles of social justice.

Should a therapist disclose personal information to a client, accept a client’s gift, or provide a former client with a job? Is it appropriate to exchange e-mail or text messages with clients or correspond with them on social networking websites? Some acts, such as initiating a sexual relationship with a client, are clearly prohibited, yet what about more subtle interactions, such as hugging or accepting invitations to a social event? Is maintaining a friendship with a former client or a client’s relative a conflict of interest.

This vocational guide provides detailed information on training and education, earnings, advancement, job prospects, working conditions, and relevant associations for twenty-five occupations in the human services.

An overview of the development of human services over the course of the twentieth century culminates in an evolutionary model which illustrates how human services generally progress from an initial "individual-problem" stage to one of considerable governmental involvement and media attention. Eight specific human services are discussed in detail: hospices for those with life-limiting illness; continuing care retirement communities; services for those with HIV/AIDS; domestic

In Restorative and Responsive Human Services, Gale Burford, John Braithwaite, and Valerie Braithwaite bring together a distinguished collection providing rich lessons on how regulation in human services can proceed in empowering ways that heal and are respectful of human relationships and legal obligations. The human services are in trouble: combining restorative justice with responsive regulation might redeem them, renewing their well-intended principles. Families provide glue that connects complex systems.

Relates how the self-direction movement was developed, the research that supports it, how the model has spread across the country and the globe, and recommendations and prospects for the future.In the past, when people with disabilities and older adults needed help with activities of daily living and navigating their communities, they rarely had any choice about who helped them, when that support was delivered, or what the worker would or would not do.