What exactly is Human Services? Human services is defined as “uniquely approaching the objective of meeting human needs through an interdisciplinary knowledge base, focusing on prevention as well as remediation of problems. “(National Organization of Human Services [NOHS], n. d) Ever since I was in my sophomore year of high school I knew that after college | wanted to work with human services in some sort of way. But being a naive sophomore, I knew nothing about the careers and the information that I did know was from the TV and the electives I took that briefly touched on this subject.
So going into college and seeing that they had courses specially for students that were interested in Human Services, I knew taking this class would only further my knowledge about this career. I’m interested in this field because I’ve always loved helping my friends when they have something that’s bothering them and I’ve always loved watching shows where they have social workers on the scene, although I know tv shows and reality are different, it’s what sparked my big interest in learning more about helpers and the Human Service career.
While I did learn a lot of helpful things about going into the Human Service career, one thing that stood out to me though was when we touched upon chapter five, Knowing your values. In this chapter I learned about how sometimes the helper’s values and his/her’s clients values might clash. This stood out to me because when you work with a variety of clients, this is bound to happen, so learning about what to do when I do come across this situation is very helpful so I don’t end up disrespecting a client accidentally.
Reading this chapter taught me that even though at times I may not agree with my client’s values, it is still essential to respect the right of my client and to embrace a different worldview. In this chapter I also learned that a helper’s job isn’t to judge the client’s values but to teach and help them explore their beliefs and help them to solving their problems.
In addition to that, another thing that stood out to me in this course was how many career options there were in Human Services, from Generalist Human Services Work to Creative Arts Therapy, to Clinical Psychology, there are options for everyone. As I got more into this chapter it helped me get an idea of what | want to do after college and the training and education I would have to go through. And the last thing that stood out to me in this course was learning that a lot of the helpers go through therapy too to help them understand how the past conflicts might still be affecting them.
Also in the various chapters I also learned the variety of skills you also need to have before entering this field such as you have to have the ability to take detailed notes, critical thinking skills, have to be good at communicating with the clients, have active listening skills, and to have a sense of empathy because without it, it would be difficult to help the client if the helper doesn’t understand their point of view in a given situation.
I also really enjoyed learning about how to deal with the stress and to prevent being burned out because I understand how stressful careers in the helping profession tend to be, I feel like I could also take what I learn about stress in here and relate it to things other than the helping profession, such as being stressed about school work, work, and ect. Before taking this class I didn’t even know that there were different kinds of burnouts and now with my knowledge I can prevent burnouts from occurring and how to deal with stress in ways that I didn’t know I could.
Such as that helpers have to remind themselves continually not to become overwhelmed by the demands and that to not lose sight of why they’re in the agency in the first place, and that to learn to accept the fact that sometimes it’s impossible to do everything. Or that helpers “have to remember that they cannot accept all the projects that might interest them even if the financial rewards might be high because it doesn’t compensate for the emotional depletion from a busy schedule. (Burger, Corey, And Corey, 2011)
But not only do helpers have to remember that, they also have to remember to prevent burnout, they have to pay attention to the early signs that they’re overworking themselves. I do at times think of where I could intern to further my knowledge about the helping career and while doing my research paper I came across an organization called Project Harmony that I remembered that had a guest speaker come talk to my class during senior year of high school.
He gave us a walkthrough on what happens when a new case comes in from beginning to end and from that point on I always wanted to learn more about the organization but never really had a chance to. In the future I also plan on volunteering there first and then ease my way into an internship later throughout the year because I really do enjoy learning about Human Services and hope that my knowledge would just only grow and get bigger after my years at Metro and then finishing up at UNO.