Human Services Worker Challenges

Intentional Interviewing Interviewing a Human Services Worker Interviewing a client to gain a clear picture of a story or an event may be a difficult and complex when conducting an interview. There are a multitude of skills and micro-skills needed to be able to identify the relevant issues, make the interviewee feel comfortable enough to share the needed information, and to correctly perceive and record the key issues.

Interviewing a human services worker may carry an additional layer of complexity because these individuals work with humans who are certainly complex in nature as well as deal with complex situations. This analysis will consider some of the key areas of concern that are present in human service work and well as some of the ethical barriers one might face during an interview.

Human Services Work Human services is a broadly defined line of work that focuses on a worker who is tasked with helping others meet human needs in a variety of ways. They must understand human systems on a variety of levels to help people meet specific needs that include the individual, group, organization, community and society in general (NOHS, N.d.).

Furthermore, a human services worker must often take an interdisciplinary approach to using the resources that they have available to them at these different levels to help an individual improve their quality of life in some regard. The problems that they encounter may be specific to an individual or possibly a community. For example, a homeless person may need community resources to find a place to live, but also have psychological issues on a personal level that need addressed.

Some of the traits that are valued in this field include patience, understanding, and a broad sense of caring for others. These professionals can work in many challenging environments including diverse settings as group homes and halfway houses; correctional, intellectual disability, and community mental health centers; family, child, and youth service agencies, and programs concerned with alcoholism, drug abuse, family violence, and aging (NOHS, N.d.). Furthermore, they may witness high levels of human suffering on a day-to-day basis that can be difficult to deal with on a personal level.

They may use a wide range of skills and come from different backgrounds such as medically oriented, socially oriented, psychologically-behavioral oriented, and educationally oriented models (NOHS, N.d.). It is often the case that a human service worker must deal with people that have suffered different forms of abuse or have been in abusive situations. When abuse is present in a situation, this can create a multitude of ethical considerations that must be made.

For example, a human service worker may work with women who have been the victim of interpersonal violence. It can often be difficult for abused victims to talk openly about their violent experiences. One study found that abused women in vulnerable situations may have trouble disclosing sensitive information about prior victimization and require different avenues for disclosure to find a method in which they feel comfortable enough to share their stories (Hlavka, Kruttschnitt, & Carbone-Lopez, 2007).

Therefore, in some situations, an interview might not be the appropriate way for some individuals to communicate information about sensitive items in their pasts. Or it may take considerable time to build up enough trust for the interviewee to be able to feel comfortable enough to share this information. Another sensitive situation that a human service worker might encounter would be with working with children that have been the victims of sexual abuse.

Depending on the child's level of development and individual characteristics (such as a learning disability), children can have a difficult conveying information about an episode of abuse or about an abusive situation.

There has been a standardization in the interviewing techniques that are used in these cases and they are based on the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) protocol; however it is argued that additional approaches need to be developed and tested for nondisclosing, partially disclosing, or recanting children, very young children, children with developmental disabilities, and children whose sexual abuse allegations are evaluated in the context of custody or visitation disputes (Olafson, 2012).

Such arguments illustrate the fact that interviewing can be difficult even when there have been well-defined protocols developed to guide interviewers. Conclusion There are many areas of concern that human service worker could struggle with. One.