After reviewing the six sections of the technical standards reflect on your understanding of a need for such formal standards. Address each of the sections in general and any specifics that may pique your interest or concern.
HS Professional Characteristics
Characteristics of Effective Human Services Professionals
Empathy The key to remember when it comes to empathy is that it is the ability to understand a situation from the other persons perspective. That is different from walking is another persons shoes.
Genuineness This is about behaving the same no matter what the situation is. Part of this is being willing to be known by others which involves some self-disclosure.
Self-Awareness This is the quality of knowing yourself which includes knowledge of ones values, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, fears, desires, strengths, and limitations.
Acceptance This is demonstrated by viewing the clients feelings, attitudes, and opinions as worthy of consideration. It is about accepting the person as a human being, but you do not have to like the persons behaviors.
Patience This is the ability to wait and be steadfast. It is reframing from acting of haste or impetuousness. Sometimes a helper has to wait for the client to be ready to work to resolve his or her life challenge.
Non-Dogmatic It is important that HSPs avoid communicating negative judgements about individuals. It is vital that HSPs provide a safe, non-judgmental space.
Strength Perspective Focusing on strengths, abilities, and resources rather than concentrating on weaknesses, deficits, and barriers.
Supporting Informed Choices The HSP needs to support a persons autonomy and right to make his or her own choices. The HSP has a responsibility to ensure that the individual has knowledge of all aspects of the services as well as the benefits and consequences of participating in those.
Maintaining Appropriate Boundaries This refers to being aware of where ones personal life ends and where the helping relationship begins.
Self-Care An effective helper MUST take care of his or her physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual health. The work in this field is hard. We hear traumatic stories and situations every day and without a strong self-care plan it is easy to become overwhelmed and even burned out.
Human Services Work
The work done by HSPs is diverse as we saw in a previous unit. What I want to address here is some similarities across the board.
All aspects require strong communication in many forms: phone conversations, face to face interactions, referrals, networking, collaborations, and documentation to name a few.
Most of you did not decide to become a Human Services Professional so you could do a bunch of documentation every day. However, this will make up between 50% and 75% of your work. It is imperative that we accept this fact and strengthen our professional writing. You may have heard the term”if it is not written down, it did not happen.” That is why documentation is so important. It may seem like a little thing to document that you left a phone message on a certain date and time, but that could mean a lot to a case if you have a non-compliant individual who says to the court “No one ever told me that.” Your documentation may make a difference in an important decision concerning your client’s future.
I know some of you have been frustrated with the scores on some of your assignments based on the PT writing rules. Of the three paragraphs that have been assigned few people have reached out for assistance and clarification on how to improve their writing. In spring when you take HSP 112 and 117 professional technical writing will be of vital importance. Documentation and court reports will be at the center of assignments. I encourage you to do whatever it takes to strengthen your PT writing. It feels like I put more time into creating that guide for you than most of you have spent in reading it, let alone applying it.
Based on information gathered from the National Organization for Human Services and other sources the following standards have been adopted by the HSP program to TCC and endorsed by the HSP Advisory Committee.
Basically, these outline what a Human Services Professional should be able to do, with or without reasonable accommodations.
Written Communication:
Demonstrate consistency in written communication at a college-level using professional technical writing guidelines;
Demonstrate good spelling, appropriate use of punctuation, clear sentence structure, paragraphing, good organization, and following a logical
Respond to these three prompts:
1) What are your thought on the need for such a formal set of standards?
2) What are your concerns for yourself and others in meeting these standards?
3) Are there any of the standards that you think would be hard to meet?
This should be a couple of strong paragraphs with examples and possible evidence. Remember to apply your PT writing skills.
Last Completed Projects
| topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
|---|