What are Human Services

What Are Human Services?

The human services definition is taken from 6 perspectives, which are 1. The themes and purposes of human services, 2. The interdisciplinary nature of human services, 3. The helping relationship, 4. Management principles, 5. Professional roles, and 6. Professional activities.

The three functions as a human service professional are different depending on the individual in which you are providing care for. The first one, social care, is for helping people meet their social needs. Social care is specifically designed for those who cannot care for themselves. Examples of this could be the elderly, children, victims, refugees, and people with mental or physical disabilities. Social control is different than social care in 2 ways, one is who receives the care, and the second is how they receive it. Social control is for people who can care for themselves but have not, or have done so, but in a way that society deems as not appropriate. Social control also has the aspect of that somebody else will decide if they receive social control. Examples of this are children, youth, or adults in the criminal justice system. Rehabilitation is the third function of human services. Rehabilitation is defined as the “task of returning an individual to a prior level of functioning. The need for rehabilitation is created by someone who was able to function completely, and becomes either socially, physically, or psychologically impaired.

Historical Origins and Development

Human services is based on three other disciplines mainly, these include sociology, psychology, and anthropology. In order to understand the client and the culture in which the human service professional will work, it is crucial that they have a basic unde...

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...Hierarchy of Needs. With this perspective the human services professional asks “what needs are not being met?” and develops a plan afterwards.

Societal change is a perspective that includes the changes that are happening around the client and how that affects the client. For example, homeless clients can seek help from a helper because the professional can help them understand what is happening in society that is keeping them homeless or made them homeless and how they can move forward accordingly.

The environmental influences perspective includes the individual client, the family of the client, social institutions, and global influences. The environmental influence perspective looks at how what is happening globally is impacting what happens in the social institutions which impacts what is happening in their family, which directly impacts the client and vise versa.