Expert answer:Building the Necessary Skills
Expert answer:identified five important skills and roles for human service providers. Describe an action plan for developing these skills. I have attached the documents from where you will need to choose the skills from. 200 words
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Chapter 1
Management in the Human Services
Purposes, Practice, and Prospects in the 21st Century
Rino J. Patti
This chapter looks broadly at human services management or administration, one of the methods
of practice employed by human services workers to achieve their professional and organizational
objectives. The important contributions managers make to the functioning of the human services
system are highlighted. We then describe the nature, size, and scope of the human services
enterprise in the United States, to underscore the importance of having a skilled management labor
force capable of developing, sustaining, and, where necessary, changing this institution. The
demographics of those who ply this craft and issues that bear on the recruitment, development, and
competence of this workforce are reviewed. Major dimensions of management practice and
variations at several levels are discussed. We then look at several issues associated with managing
in a human services context that have particular relevance for improving the quality and
effectiveness of services to consumers. The chapter concludes with a brief note on challenges
facing practitioners in the years ahead.
The Importance of Management
Management, or what managers do to catalyze and support the capacity of organizations to realize
their goals, is critical to the development, implementation, and effectiveness of human services.
People may argue about the precise nature of the manager’s contribution to these objectives, or
how managers can best achieve them, but there is little question that managers are central players
in the human services enterprise. These contributions are reflected in four areas.
Managers at all levels are instrumental in implementing the intent of human services policies
formulated by public (e.g., Congress, state legislatures, federal and state executives ) and private
(e.g., boards) governing bodies. Such policies typically set forth broad goals, populations to be
served, programs to be delivered, and funding and accountability arrangements, but it is the job of
the manager and staff to translate these directives into programs and services that are competently
and fairly administered to intended consumers.
Managers are not only implementers of policies, they also inform and influence the policy
formulation process (Austin, 2002). Policymakers rely on feedback from administrators who are
close to the communities and persons served. Managers participate in the policy process by
advocating for changes that will correct flaws in authorizing policies, identifying unmet needs and
emerging social problems, and representing the interests of groups that are underserved or
disenfranchised. Increasingly, managers, especially those at executive levels, participate in the
policy process through special interest associations (e.g., welfare directors, community mental
health associations).
Even as managers are responsible for implementing and shaping social policy, they also play
a vital role in networking with other agencies serving a common clientele. Human services
“systems” are complex and decentralized, with multiple funding sources and lines of accountability
that pose potential barriers to consumers. Increasingly, managers act as systems “engineers”
seeking multi-agency solutions to such problems as service fragmentation, eligibility barriers, and
lack of interagency coordination. In virtually all human fields (e.g., child welfare, mental health,
health), there is a continuing search for collaborative modes that enable consumers to more easily
access services and allow agencies to share and exchange information and resources (Alter, 2000;
Bardach, 1998).
For at least the last 40 years, human services agencies have been under increasing pressure to
account for how they expend public and private funds and with what effects. These expectations
have been articulated in federal, state, and local policies and in the nonprofit sector. Managers and
their staffs are the first line of accountability in the human services, and it is through them, largely,
that policymakers and the public learn whether social policies are having the desired effects. In
addition, managers at all levels of human services agencies are responsible for seeing that their
organizations have the necessary political, fiscal, and human resources to achieve agency goals
and objectives. Bringing all these elements together to create and sustain high-performing agencies
is the consummate challenge of leadership.
The Human Services Institution
The term human services often refers to a wide spectrum of organizations in health, mental health,
education, and social services. Here, we confine the definition to those organizations that provide
or support personal social services to children and their families, older adults, the mentally ill,
substance abusers, the physically and developmentally disabled, the homeless, and others who
need assistance in changing behaviors, acquiring skills, resolving personal and interpersonal
problems, and accessing the resources and care necessary to sustain themselves. The programs
provided include, prominently, services such as income assistance, counseling and therapy,
maintenance, social care, socialization, and rehabilitation.
Human services organizations, as a class, share certain fundamental similarities, including the
following:
• a heavy reliance on third-party financing, whereby all or some of the cost of the service is paid
by a third party, such as the government or an insurance company, rather than directly by the
consumer;
• the goal of improving consumers’ physical and psychological well-being, behavior, skills, and
social conditions;
• the use of technologies that do not have highly predictable consumer outcomes;
• the participation of consumers with unique goals, personal characteristics, and life experiences
in the co-production of outcomes;
• a reliance on collaborating agencies to provide essential complementary services to clients;
• a reliance on the skill, personal commitment, judgment, and discretion of frontline
professional personnel in service delivery (Austin, 2002; Hasenfeld, 1992)
Human services organizations vary in the extent to which they possess all these characteristics.
For example, many agencies derive some of their income directly from client fees rather than thirdparty payers. In some agencies, such as public assistance, the technologies employed are fairly
routine and the outcomes largely predictable. The qualifications of staff in these several fields tend
to vary from little or no professional training to extensive professional education. Despite these
variations, the issues confronting managers in these fields are sufficiently similar to justify
thinking of human services management as a generic practice applicable across this diverse
institution.
The performance of human services organizations is a matter of considerable importance to
society. Collectively, the organizations in this sector contribute to the social cohesion of society
by redistributing income and resources to the less fortunate, caring for persons whose
circumstances fall below what the community has defined as minimally desirable, giving voice to
the interests and needs of disenfranchised and powerless persons and groups, and rehabilitating
disabled or dysfunctional persons so they can realize their potential and contribute to their families
and communities.
The human services sector is also important to society because it is responsible for the
management of tens of billions of dollars each year that are used to serve many millions of
distressed and needy people of all races and ethnicities from across the social spectrum. A more
detailed discussion of the structure and financing of human services will be found in Chapter 4,
but it may be useful here to briefly touch on the scope of this enterprise to underscore the critical
importance of management to the proper design and operation of human services.
The Scope of Human Services
Human services organizations are found in the nonprofit, public, and for-profit sectors of the
economy The nonprofit sector is a major conveyor of personal social services. In
2003,100,800nonprofit human services organizations in the United States filed returns with the
government (there are more such organizations; nonprofits with less than $25,000 in yearly income
are not required to file returns). In addition, there are many religious, health, and educational
organizations with human services programs that are not reflected in this figure. The filing
organizations had revenues of $152 billion (rounded) derived principally from program service
revenues ($81.4 billion) and from contributions, gifts, and grants ($58.8 billion; U.S. Census
Bureau, 2008b).
Public human services organizations are located at the federal level, in every state and
territory, and in many local and/or regional jurisdictions. The U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services in 2006 spent approximately $48 billion for discretionary and mandated human
services including substance abuse and mental health services, services to the aged, services to
children and families (including foster care and adoption assistance, child care, and public
assistance), and the Social Services Block grant (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
n.d.). There are also numerous public human services agencies at state and local government levels.
The amount spent by these governments for public welfare programs, including cash payments,
vendor payments, and social services, was approximately $335 billion in 2004 (U.S. Census
Bureau, 2008a).
Finally, there is a substantial for-profit sector in the human services. It is difficult to estimate
how much is spent by these agencies, but the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Businesses for
2002provides data on revenues and operating expenses of businesses in the “Health Care and
Social Assistance Sector” (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005). Revenues/receipts for businesses that
correspond most closely to our definition of human services (e.g., mental health, substance abuse,
child care, individual and family services, rehabilitation, social assistance), which does not include
medical and health care fields, were nearly $250 billion. These data include both for-profit and
nonprofit businesses, so it is not possible to estimate expenditures of the for-profit sector only, but
we know based on observation that for-profit firms are substantially involved in the mental health,
substance abuse, and child care and other human services fields and that their presence in this
sector is substantial and growing (Schmid, 2004).
Even though the amount expended for human services in the U.S. is quite large, it represents
only a small percentage of total outlays in the nonprofit, government, and for-profit sectors as a
whole. Still, expenditures for human services represent a significant transfer of resources to the
poor and disabled populations in this county. How well these services are managed to benefit these
groups is a matter of critical importance.
Another perspective on the scope and size of the human services sector is provided by
employment figures. In fields roughly corresponding to our definition of human services, which
the U.S. Department of Labor refers to as “Social Assistance,” in 2006 there were 1.52 million
employees in the private sector, including managerial, professional (social workers, marriage and
family therapists, psychologists, etc), service, and administrative support workers. Thirty-five
percent of these workers, or approximately 530,000, were professional and paraprofessional
service providers (U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007a). In the state and
local governments in 2006 there were approximately 428,000 professionals and paraprofessionals
offering human services (e.g., public assistance, child abuse and foster care services, probation,
home health services). These figures do not reflect the human services program employees in
schools and medical institutions (e.g., hospitals, health maintenance organizations). Based on these
data, it is fair to estimate that there are well over 1 million human services workers in the public
and private sectors. Included in this workforce there were approximately 562,000 social workers
(including masters and bachelor-level personnel), 352,000 social and human services assistants
(usually persons with no formal professional training), and 93,000 probation officers and
correctional treatment specialists (U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007a).
No discussion of the human services labor force should exclude volunteers, who numbered
nearly 8 million in 2006 (in organizations defined as “social and community service”). Median
yearly hours worked for volunteers of all types of organizations was 50 hours a year (yearly hours
for human services are not reported separately), and there is no reason to believe this would be less
in social and community services (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008b).
Given the thousands of human services organizations, the billions of dollars spent each year
to serve the poor and disadvantaged, and the number of employees and volunteers who work in
this field, it is understandable that the performance of this industry draws increasing scrutiny by
government officials, academics, and private associations. Central to this concern is the quality of
managerial leadership.
The Human Services Managers in the Labor Force: Demographics
Managers in the human services come from a wide variety of educational backgrounds and career
paths (Hoefer, 2003). There appear to be three main groups, though their relative numbers and
distribution across sectors and subfields in the human services is a matter of speculation. Included
are those with a variety of undergraduate and community college degrees who began as frontline
personnel and worked their way up the hierarchy. These managers probably represent a substantial
proportion of supervisory and administrative personnel in the public human services (but probably
a smaller percentage of the comparable positions in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors), where
over the last several decades, owing to declassification efforts (Pecora & Austin, 1983), public
agencies recruited a large number of frontline workers without professional credentials.
Another significant source of management personnel is persons with specialized management
degrees, such as public administration, health administration, business administration, and
nonprofit management. The number of human services managers with this kind of educational
preparation has probably increased in the last two decades as university-based management
programs have given more attention to preparing students for nonprofit and human services careers
(Hoefer, 2003; Mirabella & Wish, 2000).
The human services also draw heavily upon graduates of the helping professions to fill
management positions. Social workers with masters and bachelor degrees are prominent among
this group, which also includes psychologists, gerontologists, nurses, and ministers, among others.
Most of these persons are trained to be direct service providers and begin their careers in this
capacity before being promoted through the ranks to supervisory, managerial, and executive roles.
In social work, a substantial number of the 177 accredited masters programs in the Council on
Social Work Education’s 2006 Directory of Accredited Programs (www.cswe.org) offer
specialties in management and related practices, such as planning and community organization
(sometimes referred to as macro specializations), often combined with one year of generic
preparation in social work practice and core subjects such as human behavior, social policy, and
research. Data on the career trajectories of these graduates are fragmentary (Martin, Pines, &
Healy, 1999; Patti, Diedrick, Olson, & Crowell, 1979), but it appears that they are more likely to
move into management careers than are graduates who are primarily trained for direct services
jobs.
There are no definitive data on the number and characteristics of managerial personnel in the
human services, owing partly to the varied ways in which human services is defined. However, we
can piece together a rough estimate by looking at several sources. In 2006, as we discussed earlier,
there were 1.5 million workers in the nongovernmental private social assistance field. Of these,
about 132,000 were in management-related jobs, or about 9% of the total workers in this sector
(U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007a). The number of management
personnel in the public sector human services is more difficult to calculate because employment
data for managers by area of government are not reported. However, we know that there were
approximately 8 million state and local employees in 2006. Managementrelated jobs accounted
for about 11.7% of this total (U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007b). If we
assume, conservatively, that one quarter (25%), or 2 million (in California in 2007-08, budgets for
health and welfare and corrections accounted for approximately 39% of the budget), of all state
and local employees are employed in human services agencies, and assume further that a like
percentage of this workforce is in management-related jobs (line and staff), then we may estimate
that there are approximately 234,000 managers in public human services agencies (11.7% of 2
million). Thus, it can be roughly estimated that there may be as many as 360,000 management and
related jobs in the private and public human services. And this, no doubt, underestimates the size
of the management labor force because it does not include the health and education fields that have
substantial human services program elements or management positions in the for-profit sector.
Unfortunately, we know very little about the education, gender, and ethnicity of managers in
this field, their career trajectories, the similarities or differences in the characteristics of managers
in different sectors, and whether the composition of the management labor force is changing (e.g.,
more or fewer women, more or fewer persons of color, more or fewer social workers or
publicadministrators). In a field that plays such an important role in American society, it is
unfortunate that more is not known about those who lead and manage this institution.
While there is little information about all managers in the human services, some data are
available on social workers in management. A recent study by the National Association of Social
Work (NASW) Center for Workforce Studies and the Center for Health Workforce Studies
(Whitaker, Weismiller, & Clark, 2006a), which examined the personal attributes and professional
activities of a national sample of licensed social workers in the U.S., found that 27% of the
respondents in the study spent 20 hours or more each week in management-related functions,
including supervision. Extrapolated to the entire population of licensed social workers, this would
suggest a total of approximately 84,000 licensed social workers engaged wholly or partly in
administrative practice.
Because this study did not include unlicensed social workers, we cannot know for certain how
many more social workers are in management related jobs. However, the workforce study
estimates that there are nearly 900,000 self-identified social workers in the U.S. Prior studies of
NASW members in 1988 and 1991 found that 24.1% and 22.3%, respectively, were primarily in
management work (Gibelman & Schervish, 1993). Based on the NASW workforce study estimates
and the earlier NASW membership studies, it is reasonable to assume that 25% of all self-identified
social workers are in management-related jobs: somewhere in the neighborhood of 225,000. Even
this rou …
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