Understanding the Human Services

UNDERSTANDING THE
HUMAN SERVICES

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
RECOMMENDATION...................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Human services can be defined as an approach that helps in meeting human needs
through wide knowledge base, by focusing on remedies and prevention of problems faced by
people in order to improve quality of life of the targeted population (Moorhead, Manthorpe and
Baginsky, 2019). There are various human service professionals who focus on promoting and
improving service delivery system, improving service quality in service delivery system. For this
essay Human service professional chosen is Social worker who focus on helping people who
need it. This essay will lay emphasis on historical emergence and development of social workers,
main changes and achievements, policy and legislation related to social workers, social worker’s
successes and downfalls and changes to society that might be linked to development of social
worker’s over time.
MAIN BODY
Emergence and Development of Social workers
Social workers are those professionals who focus on helping needful people in order to
improve social and health services, provide support to a community and many more. There are
various types of social workers who provide service to different kinds of service users (Winter
and Cree, 2016). First is child, family and school social workers who focus on resolving problem
of school children, school staff and family members. Sometimes it also includes placing children
in foster care homes. Another is medial and public health social workers who focus on helping
people who are seriously ill or are suffering from some chronic health problems. Third type of
social workers are mental health and substance abuse social workers.
Social workers as a profession emerged in 19th century whose main roots stated from
some private initiatives known as philanthropy which consisted on various private and personal
level initiatives taken buy people for good and welfare of public and to improve quality of life of
public. However, need of social work existed long before and there were various kinds of
religious communities or private charitable organizations already existed that mainly focused on
helping and providing service to needful people (Herrero and Nicholls, 2017). But it boosted
after industrial revolution and effects of great depression of the 1930’s that increased pressure on
social workers to become more definite, efficient and disciplined. After second world war
government were forced to reduce their social expenditure because of which need to social
workers emerged in order to reduce gap between rich and poor and reduce inequality. There was
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