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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
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