Instructors Manual and Test Bank

Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank for Mandell and Schram An Introduction to Human Services Policy and Practice Eighth Edition prepared by Yvonne Smith Nathalie Saltikoff 1 / 4

© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.1 Chapter 1 What Are Human Services?What Do Human Service Workers Do?

SUMMARY

In this chapter we begin to sketch a picture of the surprisingly large variety of human service agencies and workers, many of whom have different titles and varying responsibilities. The student is introduced to Kathy Holbrook and her family via a term paper she wrote for a human services class. She was asked to describe an episode in her life when she needed help. Her paper is followed by two alternate scenarios that are equally as plausible but would have led her to different social service agencies. This device is used to illustrate several concepts that will be

repeated in the chapters that follow:

1.The problems of one member of a family inevitably affect all of the others, often in very dramatic and life threatening ways. This is an expression of systems theory, which undergirds the book.

2.Human service problems are served by networks of interconnecting services, often complementary, sometimes contradictory. Some deal with the individual directly, while others provide a superstructure in which services can be delivered.

3.The pathway people who seek help follow depends on the particular nature and severity of their problem(s), the resources in their immediate environment, their attitudes towards receiving help, and often luck and chance.

4.There are many different professional roles in the human services and many different helping acts are performed by a diverse array of people, both lay and trained.By telling Kathy's story in three different ways, the student is able to visualize the diverse aspects of the problem of addiction and the many possible agencies and people that can provide help.Although the Holbrooks and their neighbors turn to human service agencies when their problems are too heavy to carry alone, many barriers stand in their way of getting the services they need. We describe some of the barriers that are generated by their internal emotions, fears, attitudes, resistances, as well as the external barriers of lack of funds, lack of information, long waiting lists, etc.We suggest that lack of information and myths about the human services often keep people from seeking out services and often prevent the public from fully supporting our work.Finally we briefly discuss the positive aspects of the diversity of the field, suggesting that new workers can find a niche that fits their unique attributes, life style, and personal ideology.The interview with a drug and alcohol educator on a college campus is intended to exemplify the complexity, highs and lows of a human service job with which students might be familiar. 2 / 4

© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.2

PUTTING THEORY INTO PRACTICE: SUPPLEMENT ARY

ASSIGNMENTS

•The Interwining Network of Human Services (a brief written assignment followed by class discussion) Ask students to briefly write about the last time they gave help to someone else. (This could be helping someone access services, giving a friend advice, or even giving directions to a lost student). Then, have students describe the last time they received help from someone else.This helps students understand that people are frequently involved in both the providing and receiving of human services, and helps decrease the idea that providers and clients of help are somehow different from each other.•The Helpee Paper (a written assignment followed by small group discussion) This is the same assignment that Kathy did in the chapter. The students are asked to describe a problem that they encountered at some point in their lives. They describe the people who tried to help them and the techniques they used to solve it. If any human service agencies were involved they should describe the services they offered and how they felt about them.What kind of acts facilitated the problem resolution? What kinds of acts were useless or negative as they tried to regain their balance or make a decision?In small groups, students are asked to share their papers after the instructor has read and commented on them. They are asked to take notes about the positive and negative feelings the reader had as they worked to resolve their problems. If they feel they did not receive any outside help, they are to speculate on what kind of help might have been useful and what they would like to be able to do for others with a similar problem or dilemma. This will enable students to become sensitized to the feelings a client is likely to have. More importantly, it will help them to see that we are all, at some point, the helpee and that everyone faces problems as they go through life. They might not be as dramatic as Kathy’s, but they were painful at the time.Of course if a student does not feel free in sharing the paper, even after the rules of confidentiality have been reviewed, they should have the right to pass.•Human Service Scavenger Hunt (a research assignment) The Task: To discover which social services are available in the student’s town.Step 1: Each student chooses a human service problem area. They could select one the

following or one of their own choosing:

•Elderly services •Teenage mothers •Children with Learning Disabilities •Runaway Teenagers •People recently released from mental hospitals (or psychiatric wards) •Families in crisis •Adults who are addicted to alcohol or drugs.•People with HIV or AIDS Step 2: They should draw a chart with five columns headed: •Educational and Recreational Services 3 / 4

© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.3 •Income Maintenance and In-kind Benefits •Health and Social Service Resources •Social Action or Legal Services •Residential Resources Under each of the programs they should list the actual agencies they found that help fulfill these functions. They will need to hunt through the local newspaper, the telephone book, on the internet, at the local school department or hospital, etc.Step 3: After they identify as many programs as they can they should choose one agency to visit, interviewing any staff or clients who are willing, collecting the agency brochures, annual reports, etc.

Step 4: The students share their reports with the class.

•The Want Ad Search (a small research and reaction project) Each student is asked to clip ten want ads for human service positions from local newspapers, photocopy them from professional journals in the library, or print them out from internet listing services. Then, students should write their thoughts about each of these jobs.Assuming they had the proper credentials and experience, to what extent does each fit their interests, life style, attributes and personal ideology?These reports can be shared with the class and become the basis of a discussion about the professional roles found in the community.•Becoming Acquainted With the Campus as A Human Service Agency Speakers can be invited to speak to the class about their own human service roles on the

campus. Many campuses have at least one or more of the following:

a.Campus chaplains who do pastoral counseling b.Counseling or vocational testing professionals c.A mental health professional related to the campus health service d.An office that works with disabled or handicapped students e.A tutoring center

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