Deck 4: Attitudes/values, Skills, and Knowledge of the Human Service Worker

Question 1

Discuss some of the factors that distinguish the structure of a professional helping relationship from the structure of a friendship.

Answer 1

The structure of the professional helping relationship is different from a friendship in these five ways:
A. It exists for a limited time, perhaps a specified time period, whereas friendships, except in special circumstances, might last for a lifetime.
B. It has a clear, mutually agreed upon set of goals or a focus that is agreed upon in the worker/client contract.
C. It has a division of labor. The worker can do some things and the client will be expected to make certain decisions and take certain courses of action. Whenever possible the client makes the decisions about what should be done because it is the client's life.
D. It is disciplined. It is guided by certain principles which must be adhered to, such as confidentiality. A worker cannot let his or her own life situation interfere with the client's time or space.
E. It is built on acceptance but not necessarily on attraction or affection. The worker might be able to do effective work with a client even if the client does things that are distasteful to the worker, or that are opposed to the worker's personal values.

Question 2

What do you think are some of the tensions or problems that might occur when a human service worker tries to keep clear boundary lines between the professional helping relationship and a friendship with a particular client?

Answer 2

Examples:
• It is only natural to want the best for your client, especially when you see him or her in pain or about to make a potentially disastrous choice. If workers aren't careful to stay disciplined, they might push the client into doing something he or she wasn't ready for and might later regret and resent.
• We cannot always keep confidentially in the professional relationship if we feel the client may harm him or herself or someone else.
• Often in the small agency we share dinners, birthdays and other social kind of events with our clients. Often we live in the same communities. It can be very hard not to cross the line and become involved with them in other aspects of their lives or our lives.

Question 3

What do we mean when we state that human service work is very holistic and therefore all levels of the pyramid of A/V, S, and K are of equal importance?

Answer 3

A doctor or an engineer who is an impatient or cold person, but very brilliant, can still be highly successful in his or her work. But a human service worker, such as a school guidance counselor who has those same characteristics will probably be useless and maybe even hurtful to a student. If the counselor cannot put the student at ease, the student will not even "hear" anything the counselor has to say. We reach people by how we say things as well as what we say.

Question 4

What do you think the author meant by titling his book about disturbed children, "Love Is Not Enough"?

Question 5

Why do you think the workers at Sanctuary House state that it is critical to engage the young people in their program before they have been on the streets for too long a period of time?

Question 6

What is the difference between sympathy and empathy? Why is empathy so important in the human services? Give an example where you have been able to feel how someone feels as opposed to feeling bad for how they feel.

Question 7

Why is self-awareness crucial to being a good human service worker? Give an example.

Question 8

To what extent do you think a worker can always build a good relationship with each of his or her clients? If a positive relationship cannot be built, what factors might be getting in the way of progress? Is it alright to acknowledge a negative relationship? Might that help?

Question 9

List five areas of human service knowledge that are important. Which ones have you already begun to explore, in what ways?

Question 10

When a helper and helpee negotiate a contract:

A) They are acknowledging empathy.
B) They are stating that the counselor is ready to establish a pattern of service.
C) They are forging an agreement about what will be included in their work together.
D) All of the above.

Question 11

One characteristic that distinguishes the professional helping relationship from a friendship is that the professional helping relationship is:

A) More important.
B) Longer lasting.
C) More disciplined.
D) More loving.

Question 12

Even in informal settings, everything a client says must be:

A) Analyzed.
B) Believed.
C) Confidential.
D) Confronted for accuracy.
E) Maximized.

Question 13

A client will judge the ultimate success of a worker/client encounter by:

A) How much help he feels he has received.
B) How economical the services were.
C) How clearly the worker tells him how to solve the problem.
D) All of the above.

Question 14

In the preparation of human service workers, the accumulation of hard statistics and facts is of primary importance.

Question 15

In the interview with John, who works at Sanctuary House, it was stated that if teenagers refuse to reveal personal information about their situation, they couldn't stay at the house.

Question 16

A belief in people's capacity to change is classified as a(n)

A) Knowledge.
B) Attitude/Value.
C) Skill.

Question 17

When a client is expressing negative or painful feelings, the first thing a worker should do is:

A) Calm him down.
B) Reassure her that the feelings will pass.
C) Point out that others are in a worse situation.
D) Distract her by changing the subject.
E) Receive and experience the pain.

Question 18

A worker knows she has been fully trained when she no longer needs to ask her peers or a supervisor for help in dealing with a client's problems.

Question 19

John often uses humor when dealing with his clients at Sanctuary House because:

A) he is still young and inexperienced.
B) often a serious message can be communicated through kind humor, in particular with teenagers.
C) he wants the teens to see him as a regular person.
D) the teenagers do not have the intellect to grasp a serious message.
E) none of the above are good reasons; humor is inappropriate.

Question 20

Which of the following is not a data gathering skill?

A) Active listening.
B) Labeling the client's problem.
C) Reading and researching journals.
D) Making home visits or agency visits.

Question 21

By keeping accurate records, a worker assures continuity from one shift of counselors to the next.

Question 22

Not only do the attitudes, values, skills, and knowledge areas vary from one occupation to another, but so too does the relative importance of each dimension.

Question 23

No matter how complex a situation, a human service worker can always be assured that with the right training, a "correct" action will produce the "right" results.

Question 24

Although the structure of the professional helping relationship sets the stage for competent human service intervention, its content - words and action - is most important.