Human Services Essentials Program: Getting Started

The Human Services Essentials Program is designed to prepare human service professionals to apply skills, knowledge, and attitudes across diverse practice settings, while building program capacity so as to offer clients the highest quality care and support. 

HS Essentials: Getting Started is for staff who are new to human services. Courses include:

A Holistic Approach to the Human Services System

• The core purposes for human services programs
• The importance of taking a person-in-environment view when working with clients
• Identifying the interrelationships of life domains, and aspects of the environment that impact a client’s ability to meet their own needs

Working with the Person within the System

• Person-centered approaches, strength-based case management, and using active listening, reflections and open-ended questions
• The role of personal values, basics of confidentiality and boundaries, and creating an initial self-care plan

Accountable Case Management in a Person-Centered/Data-Driven Organization

• Understanding the continuous cycle of case management practices and a conceptual framework that supports clients in their transition to self-sufficiency
• Basic technical writing and digital literacy

Working with the Context of Poverty and Economic Barriers in Human Services

• Viewing poverty in context, defining and measuring poverty, and difficulties of living just above income thresholds