Services that support individuals and families occur in a wide variety of settings, both as stand-alone services, such as an inpatient substance abuse center, and also embedded in larger social structures, such as schools or hospitals. They can be funded entirely through state or federal monies and agencies, such as the Oregon Department of Human Services, or funded with a variety of funding streams that include public monies, fundraising, foundation grants, and ongoing donors. Many local agencies and small nonprofit programs fit into the second group.

Human services professionals are key agents in the communities they serve because they help connect clients to other programs and resources that they need. For example, someone who comes to a food bank to pick up a box of food, they may also need access to money for their children’s school supplies, or housing resources. The food bank worker who is skilled and knowledgeable about all the community programs will be able to help that family on a larger scale than only supplying the food for a week. There is no overarching organization or resource bank that can keep perfectly up to date on what is available, although some communities have a coordinating agency that attempts to do this. Availability of grants, services, and programs tends to shift frequently in the social services field, so staying knowledgeable about what is currently available is key.

Agencies and services can be organized to serve the community in different ways. Some are organized around a specific problem. For example, most states have a public agency that looks out for the welfare of children, especially children who may be experiencing abuse or neglect in their home, or in other settings. Other services may be embedded in a larger structure, such as a hospital and serve primarily to support transition and access to a variety of resources, not focused on one specific problem. And other services are organized to serve a specific population, such as military members or veterans, or older adults. Let’s take a closer look at each of these ways of organizing services.

5.4.1 Services that Address Social Problems

When working with individuals who need help, human services professionals can both identify whether the person is experiencing a social problem and also help the person to address their individual situation. There is value in identifying an issue as a social problem, meaning that the problem is systemic in nature. It helps us to avoid “blaming the victim,” or the person who is experiencing the problem, which reduces stigma, in itself a problem. In addition, the human services professional may have the opportunity to address the social problem on a mezzo or macro level.

One of the places you might work in human services could be organized around a social problem; in other words, its focus is to serve those who are experiencing one particular problem. Examples of these might be an inpatient substance use disorder rehabilitation center, or a shelter for people experiencing houselessness. In both cases, the primary purpose is to address one particular problem, with the expectation that resolving this problem will likely lead to the person being able to address other issues as well. For example, counseling might be provided at either of these programs, as well as resources for employment and health care. While other resources are provided, the focus is on the primary problem. Advocacy may be embedded within a direct service organization, or it may be a separate agency altogether, mostly operating at a macro level on policy change.

5.4.3 Services Embedded in an Institutional Setting

Sometimes social services are embedded in an institution used by many, which makes it accessible to anyone using that setting. For example, most hospitals employ a social worker, human services professional, or other kind of care coordinator who works with medical patients and families. They assess a person’s overall well-being in the hospital, as well as make referrals for transitioning from hospital to home. In another example, social services may be embedded in a school itself, or immediately tangential to the school. All children, whether they are currently experiencing a problem or not, would potentially be able to use those services when needed. Examples of this will be discussed in Chapter 7. Another institution that houses social services are some jails and prisons. These institutions sometimes include substance use disorder treatment, counseling, life skills coaching, or transition resources.

5.4.4 Services That Serve a Specific Population

Some social services are designed to serve a specific population and there may be specific criteria that must be met to access these services. For example, both current military members and veterans of the armed services are served by designated hospitals, mental health therapists, and other social service agencies. Most veterans are eligible for these benefits although there are limitations based on the amount of time served, whether they are considered to be combat troops, and how the member was discharged (Phillipps, 2022 and U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, 2022). Similarly, services exist specifically to serve older adults and adults that have a disability. The following feature provides an example of such a service.

5.4.6 Remediation, Intervention, Prevention

Remediating problems, intervening in problems, and preventing problems are three ways that human services professionals help others. When working at an organization or with a specific population, you may be involved in all three activities or you may be focused primarily on one of these actions.

Let’s start with remediation, the correction or reversing of behaviors. This is needed when a problem is chronic and when prevention and intervention have not worked to solve a problem. There are settings that are specifically situated to remediate and rehabilitate, which helps people to relearn or reform their behaviors. These include correctional facilities, probation offices, and addiction centers. In many cases, individuals are mandated or required to these kinds of settings, though in the case of someone with substance use disorders that person might self-enroll. In these settings, the problem is often chronic and has been assessed and identified, so the focus is on changes of thinking and behavior. Some patients or clients will be motivated to change, and others will be resistant. In addition, correctional and probation settings can contain a mixture of personnel and ideologies. While people coming from human services and social work education and philosophies are most focused on rehabilitation, other ideologies that focus more on punishment will also be present, as represented in figure 5.4. This is a tension within the society of the United States, and exists in the workplace as well.

Figure 5.4 Viewpoints about the purposes for incarceration vary; human services professionals tend to see the rehabilitation opportunities in preparation for life outside of prison for people who are incarcerated.

Interventions, which help people to address problems as they occur, typically precede remediation, and may prevent someone from needing a more invasive treatment. When intervening, professionals help people solve problems as they occur. Intervention services take place in a wide variety of settings, including those that focus on remediation. For example, someone at an outpatient center for their addiction who is also experiencing food insecurity might be given referrals and access to food banks, food stamps, or other services. When you work in human services, it is always important to see your clients as whole people who have multiple strengths and needs, and be prepared to support their efforts to solve life problems, even if it is not the primary purpose of the organization or service that you provide. Other common intervention services include:

• employment offices
• food banks
• juvenile probation services
• resource centers that coordinate a variety of services such as child care, food access, shelter, counseling and others
• child abuse, domestic violence, and intimate partner violence services
• relief nurseries

Intervention is often paired together with other interventions as well as with prevention services.

Prevention services that help people develop healthy life strategies may involve education, counseling, or planning. These can occur in a variety of settings including schools, public health agencies, mental health programs, and hospitals. Prevention work also includes helping individuals prevent the recurrence of problems by giving planning, budgeting, problem-solving or counseling support. Prevention services may be paired with other services such as child care. For example, some child care centers offer parent education, home visits, and co-oping opportunities. Providing a structure for education, networking, and support can give parents the opportunity to build their own social support structures. They can also learn from people with child development and learning strategy expertise, and apply that knowledge to their own parenting. Preventative work involves helping people build on their strengths to prevent recurring problems or new problems and can be very rewarding.

5.4.6.1 Micro, Mezzo, or Macro?

After reading about the various ways that human services can be organized, you may be wondering about how this fits with the concept of work being done at the micro, mezzo, or macro level that was introduced in Chapter 1. The simple explanation is that human services workers can work at any level of service within prevention, intervention, and remediation services. In other words, human services professionals work 1:1 at the micro level with clients in all realms: incarcerated prisoners (remediation), houseless people (intervention), and new parents (prevention). They also work at the mezzo level with groups like people convicted of intimate partner violence (remediation), support groups for people with substance abuse disorders (intervention), and communities working to solve a local problem such as creating safe places for their children to play (prevention). And macro level program and policy work is needed in all sectors. Examples include planning and advocacy for the incarcerated or formerly incarcerated (remediation), structuring and planning of government programs such as child welfare (add type here), social security and unemployment insurance (intervention), and creating health structures and systems such as parent education, community centers, health care (prevention).

5.4.7 Size, Funding, and Purpose of Organizations

There are other factors that distinguish settings where social services are provided. These include:

• the size of the organization (how many people work there?)
• the funding of the organization (i.e., governmental, private, fundraising, donors, and grants from foundations)
• the purpose (service required of individuals or mandated by legislation or administrative rule)

A small organization with fewer than ten employees will likely have fewer layers of management and ask employees to be more flexible. This can create benefits and challenges, depending on your perspective. If you like having variety in your work day, a small organization is more likely to provide that than would a large public entity such as child welfare, where there are more people performing the same function and more layers of bureaucracy. On the other hand, the larger organization likely will provide support in the form of others doing the same tasks that you are doing, and multiple layers of administrative support for the work.

Funding from the government tends to be predictable, or at least more so than when an organization relies on fundraising, grants from foundations, and donors. While many organizations are sustained via those sources, it takes a consistently focused financial officer and/or fundraising arm of the agency to ensure stability for workers and for clients when funds are not guaranteed year to year.

Organizations that have public mandates, such as serving families using Temporary Aid for Needy Families, will also have steady public funding, until and unless that mandate is changed by the legislature. In that case, there will be time to either upsize or downsize the organization in relation to the changes in the law. Steady funding usually translates to higher salaries and benefits than an organization that is funded by a combination of grants, fundraising, public monies or donors.

The strengths of the interdisciplinary major of human services are evident as we discuss the multiple settings that professionals inhabit. In addition, understanding the complex network of supports and programs that individuals and families need is a key strategy to becoming an effective human services professional. In the upcoming sections, we will look more closely at some of the settings and populations that are most common to human services work: health care, including mental health and substance use disorders; criminal justice settings; and services for military members and veterans. Later in the text, we will look more deeply at services for children, older adults, and trauma-informed practices.

5.4.8 References

Grace center in Corvallis—Adult day services. (2022). Grace Center. https://gracecenter-corvallis.org/

Oregon counties by population. (2020). https://www.oregon-demographics.com/counties_by_population

Phillipps, D. (2022, April 15). The unseen scars of those who kill via remote control. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/us/drones-airstrikes-ptsd.html

U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (2022). “Eligibility for VA health care” from https://www.va.gov/health-care/eligibility/