Skills and Characteristics of Human Services Workers free essay sample

Knowledge and expertise are two of the most important skills for a human service worker to have. When clients come in for help, they want a worker with knowledge who will be able to help them. The client needs to feel comfortable that the human service worker he or she is seeing has knowledge and expertise on the client’s issues, especially. For the worker, knowledge and expertise benefit him or her as well. If the worker has a client coming in with an issue the worker has never dealt with before, then it would be smart for the worker to do some research on that subject in preparation. If the proper knowledge cannot be gained in the time before the appointment, it probably would be wiser for another worker who already has the knowledge to help that client. The human service worker always needs to remember that it is the client’s needs that come first, no matter whether it hurts the workers pride or not. We will write a custom essay sample on Skills and Characteristics of Human Services Workers or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Another important characteristic a human service worker needs to have is passion for the subject matter. If a human service worker is not passionate about what he or she is doing then it will show to his or her clients. This lack of passion negatively could impact the client as well as the human service worker. People do not do their best work if there is no passion, and when dealing with people’s lives those people expect their worker to be doing his or her best work. Cultural competence is also extremely important in human services. A worker needs to be competent with all the different cultures that he or she will be working with. Each culture is different in many ways. Some things which may be normal in one culture could be very offensive to another. Without cultural competence a worker could inadvertently offend clients; scaring them away or angering them without realizing it. Clients need to feel comfortable with their worker and something like that could ruin the relationship that had been built between the client and his or her worker. Another skill a human service worker must possess is observance. The worker needs to notice the body language, the look on the client’s face, the intonations as the client is talking, and so on. A client could be saying one thing, but his or her body language could be saying something completely different. If the human service worker is not observant, he or she would miss things like that. This writer, especially always has been a people watcher. As a child this writer was very shy, so instead of jumping up and joining in all the time, she would just sit and observe. This taught this writer a large amount about the people she watched before she even met them. To this day, everywhere this writer goes she watches all the people around her soaking up all the uniqueness of man and womankind. Empathy is another skill a human service worker must have. The worker does not always have to agree with the client, or even like the client, but he or she needs to empathize with the client. Sometimes this might be tough, but most will discover that there is usually something that he or she can empathize with. For instance, during a television show this writer was watching a client came in to see his therapist. The client’s presenting problem was that he hated fat people. He was disgusted and revolted by them, and believed it was his right to tell the people that they were fat and needed to lose weight. The therapist had a hard time connecting or empathizing with the client, as the therapist was overweight himself at one time, and had been bullied by his father while he was growing up. The client did not see that what he was doing to these overweight people was bullying. He actually thought that by telling them those things he was helping them to lose weight. Finally the client and therapist had a breakthrough when trying to figure out where this hatred of the overweight had come from. The client had been bullied by an overweight child while in elementary school. This only happened for a short time, and the client was quite young at the time (only about seven or eight), but the bullying never left his mind. He realized he was taking out his anger on overweight people all because of a young boy who bullied him in his hildhood. This breakthrough worked to find a way that the therapist could empathize with the client. Although the therapist still thought that the client was wrong on many levels, he could empathize with the little child who was bullied, because he had been bullied himself. That is a moment that sticks out in this writers mind and will stay there for th e rest of this writer’s life. So, when dealing with a client this writer does not particularly like, this writer will remember to keep an open mind and know that there is probably a part of that client that this writer can empathize with. It just may take a little bit of time to find that part. Two more skills are understanding group diversity and people skills. A human service worker must have good people skills. Clients need to connect to their worker in order to open up and be honest with him or her. If the worker has bad people skills, the worker will lose clients and eventually not have any, or get fired. Clients do not want to pay money to get advice from a person they do not like. Understanding group diversity is also a needed skill. Especially for the worker who works in a group or with a large amount of people. This knowledge is also important when running group sessions with clients. Every person is different and has different skills. It is important to figure out which skills each person excels at and those that he or she does not. Once that is figured out, people could be given activities that match up with his or her skills, and can learn from others the skills he or she may not be so good at. This writer has learned a lot about group diversity while in school. University of Phoenix is big on teaching people to work in teams. Each class has team assignments that have to be done, and done as a team. Through going to school there this writer has gained important knowledge about working in teams. Learning how each person works, who has what skills, figuring out this writer’s own skills, and which skills to improve upon. Writing skills are also important in human services. The human service worker has to take quick notes after seeing each client, and take longer notes with more information after. These notes are important and are added to the client’s chart. These notes could be used later in court or for other reasons, so it is important that they are thorough, understandable, and well assembled. Many human service workers work with other human service agencies as well. There is correspondence between all the different agencies about their shared clients. Correspondences that are not grammatically correct or with spelling errors do not look professional, and can make the worker look bad. This leads to computer skills. Computer skills are very important in human services. Computers are used to track clients, write notes, and so on. Technology has grown so much, and has been implemented everywhere. Many agencies are now giving their human service workers laptops to take with them when visiting client homes. All of the client’s information goes on the computers. Having all the information on a computer makes things much easier. If the supervisor needs to see something about a client, he or she can now simply look that information up on his or her computer, or have the worker email the information. If another therapist, or doctor, or lawyer, or policeman, or whoever, needs the information it is now easier to access. No more combing through filing cabinets and files, now all the information can be looked up at a touch of a button. A human service worker needs to be a good mediator. Many times the client issues do not only involve the client. Sometimes the presenting problems involve family, friends, and loved ones as well. In this case, the worker could ask to see the client as well as the family member or friend with him or her. The point of being a good mediator is to make sure not to choose a side. A mediator needs to stay equal in the eyes of the clients, not choosing one person’s side over another’s. If a client believes the mediator is choosing someone else’s side over his or her side, the client can just shut down or stop mediation, claiming unfairness. The mediator should help the clients to help themselves, being there to mediate, but not tell them what to do. The client should be able to figure out how to fix their own problem or problems. This knowledge helps them in many areas of their lives. Teaches them to be an independent thinker, instead of just doing what the therapist advises them to do. This kind of knowledge is priceless for a client, and is exactly the goal of the therapist. A human service worker needs to be non-judgmental and an encourager for his or her clients. In the world of human services being non-judgmental is a must. A client needs to feel comfortable enough to come to meeting with his or her worker and express his or her feelings. When being faced with someone who is judgmental a client will shut down and no longer want to say anything. Why should he or she continue on and continue to be judged. A client comes in knowing he or she has a problem. He or she wants help with this problem, not to be judged by it. In that case, he or she can just stay home and be judged by the people in his or her life. Clients need to feel encouraged by their worker. It is always easier for a person to make changes in his or her life if he or she is encouraged every step of the way. When people are not encouraged they see no reason to continue on with the hard work that change takes. They figure why go the hard route with no encouragement, when it is so much easier to continue on making the same mistakes. Just like how a small child is encouraged in every small step he or she takes, an adult trying to make positive changes in his or her life needs that same kind of encouragement. That little boost can mean the difference between continuing on with the changes or stopping altogether. Along with being non-judgmental and an encourager, a human service worker needs to be a leader and confronting at times. A human service worker needs to be a leader and show those leadership skills when working with clients. Clients are not going to want to take advice from a wallflower or pushover. The client needs to see someone who is strong and shows true leadership skills. Part of being a leader is being confronting at times. Confronting clients when they are wrong and do not see it. Confronting the clients who have always been given what they want and told they were right when they were not. Sometimes people do not realize they are doing or saying something wrong until they are confronted about the situation. The man or woman who thinks he or she is a jokester sometimes does not realize that to other people he or she is coming off as arrogant or offensive. This client needs to be confronted with this fact until he or she can see him or herself through other’s eyes. This leads to interpersonal skills. The human service worker needs to be able to teach interpersonal skills to clients as well as having interpersonal skills him or herself. Some people were never taught interpersonal skills and do not know how to properly interact with other people. This writer was very shy growing up so can understand about this. This writer did not have many interpersonal skills growing up because of the shyness and lack of interaction with many people. This writer did watch people a lot which helped later on to develop friendships and build on those interpersonal skills, but for others it is not so easy. Some people are like hermits; they do not want to interact with others, so their interpersonal skills are seriously lacking. The problem with these clients is that they do not care to interact with people and do not see a need to have interpersonal skills. Basically, the client could care less whether people like him or her or not. In fact, it is sometimes better when people do not like him or her so that he or she does not have to deal with them. The job of the human service worker is to show these clients that whether they like it or not, they have to be around people and deal with people on almost a daily basis. Interpersonal skills are very important skills to learn. A client does not necessarily have to like being around people, but in his or her life, he or she is going to have to deal with people every day. Having interpersonal skills makes this much easier. Communication is another important skill human service workers must possess. In fact, every individual needs to communicate effectively in his or her person life and at work. Communication is a major part of the relationship between a human service worker and his or her client. The client comes to the worker to present a problem and the human service worker needs to be able to understand the problem. The client should believe he or she can speak honestly and openly to the worker, and the worker should repeat back some of what the client says in order to confirm the worker understands correctly what the client is saying. People communicate in a variety of ways; verbally, through actions, and through body language. Understanding these types of communication is an important skill for a human service worker to possess and to be able to teach to clients. Many arguments in people’s lives are due to miscommunication. Teaching clients communication skills helps them tremendously in their personal and work lives. Human service workers need many characteristics and skills to effectively work with clients. Some of the most important characteristics and skills have been discussed above, but there are still many more. The skills discussed above are not only important for every human service worker to possess, but more importantly, to teach to clients to use in their own lives.