Preface

This book is significant in several ways. It is the very first openly licensed text specifically for the human services profession. Second, it benefitted both from original writing, but also the steadily developing openly licensed world of academic works. As an interdisciplinary field, we were able to draw on multiple existing openly licensed works.  This book, Introduction to Human Services includes adaptions from the following:

• Social Work & Social Welfare: Modern Practice in a Diverse World
•  “The Whitewashing of Social Work History: How Dismantling Racism in Social Work Education Begins With an Equitable History of the Profession”
• Introduction to Social Work at Ferris State University
• Introduction to Community Psychology
• Social Problems: Continuity and Change
• Contemporary Families: An Equity Lens  

And finally, it is the first introductory textbook of any kind (commercial or open licensed) to integrate an understanding of the way the history of human services has been whitewashed in this country.  This inclusion is only possible because of the scholarly and openly licensed work by Kelechi Wright, MEd, LCPC, LPC; Kortney A. Carr, LCSW, LSCSW; and Becci A. Akin, PhD, all associated with the School of Social Welfare at the University of Kansas.

–Elizabeth B. Pearce