9.1 Chapter Overview and Learning Objectives
Ethical Standards for Human Services Professionals
Standard 36: Human service professionals hold a commitment to lifelong learning and continually advance their knowledge and skills to serve clients more effectively (NOHS, 2015).
This chapter focuses on the transition from the world of being a student into the world of human services work. This transition starts when you participate in your first internship or volunteer position. Although some of you may not yet see yourself as a professional, you are developing connections and a reputation for who you are in the workplace. It is important to behave professionally in your fieldwork setting.
Because human services emphasizes lifelong learning, there is an implicit understanding that you do not know everything that a long-practicing professional knows. However, you should be open to learning. This chapter is focused on important traits, knowledge, and practices that will help you make decisions about your future as you transition into the world of human services work.
Learning Objectives
- Apply reflective tools for career assessment.
- Assess training, certification, degrees, and continuing education required for human services career paths.
- Discuss the value of participating in field placements, understanding organizational culture, and identifying mentors.
- Apply knowledge and skills to identify next steps in the career path, including education, internships, and career focus.
Key Terms
Key terms are important vocabulary for understanding the content of the chapters. They will be bolded and defined via an in-text glossary the first time that they appear in the chapter.
Key terms for this chapter are:
- Compassion fatigue: a consequence of knowing about a traumatizing event experienced or witnessed that reduces one’s capacity or interest in being empathetic or bearing clients’ suffering (Adams et al., 2006)
- Compassion satisfaction: the sense of fulfillment you feel for the work you do
- Continuing education credits: Continuing education requirements depend on your licensures, certification, board requirements. Some of the requirements include keeping human service providers up to date on the latest ethical, suicide prevention, and treatment trends every couple of years
- Decolonize: the acts of identifying systems of oppressive colonization, dismantling historical records that emphasize the dominant culture’s story, and striving to effect power structures so that they are shared more equitably
- Degree: an academic rank conferred by a college or university after completion of a specific course of study
- Field education: a credit class in which students apply theory to practice by using what you have learned during coursework in a real-world setting with a supervisor or mentor who is invested in your growth and development
- First-generation college student: the first person in their immediate family to go to college.
- Internship: supervised, structured learning experiences in a professional setting (University of Maryland, n.d.)
- Informational Interview: an informal meeting with a professional in the field
- License: a certification conferred by the government or an educational institution that is required for certain occupations
- Mentor: an experienced individual who helps to guide a less experienced person, sometimes called a mentee, in their learning and growth
- Mindfulness: a mental state of focused attention on the present moment, accepting and acknowledging one’s feelings, thoughts, and physical sensations
- Organizational culture: system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs that show people what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior in a particular agency or workplace
- Positionality: awareness of your own social identities and how those fit with others and within a power structure
- Practicum: opportunity for students to observe and apply their knowledge in a professional setting. Typically unpaid and connected to a specific course. Practicum experiences are usually shorter than internships (SocialWork.org, n.d.)
- Profession: a paid career that involves education, formal training, and/or a formal qualification
- Restorative practices: strategies that build, strengthen, and repair relationships among individuals as well as connections within communities
- Trauma stewardship: recognizes that trauma has impacts that can be named and managed; it acknowledges that the person who is helping someone who is suffering from trauma may also suffer
- Group Supervision: Supervision groups can have 3 to 10 therapists, and options include triadic or group supervision. They can be drop-in or closed, and the requirements depend on state regulations
- Individual Supervision: Individual clinical supervisors throughout your career or even in various specialty areas, like individual trauma supervision from a trauma clinical supervisor or individual substance abuse supervision from an addictions specialist
Licenses and Attributions
“Chapter Overview and Learning Objectives” by Elizabeth B. Pearce is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Revised by Martha Ochoa-Leyva.
a professional field focused on helping people solve their problems.
a credit class in which students apply theory to practice by using what you have learned in coursework in a real world setting with a supervisor/mentor who is invested in the student’s growth and development.
system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs that show people what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior in a particular agency or workplace.