Human Service Delivery: A Case Study

Human services has evolved over the years to be able to provide services in many different settings and with many different options. When human services first started in the 1500s the Catholic Church was primarily responsible for providing the assistance (Woodside & McClam, 2015). Human services started under the church guidance causing many institutions to be founded for the poor, orphans, the elderly, and for people with disabilities causing many to be housed in asylums due to their behavior (Woodside & McClam, 2015). There was a shift after the 1500s when the church involvement declines and the government’s involvement increased causing some conflict between the church and state (Woodside & McClam, 2015). The big change in human …show more content…
Institutional based delivery started out with locations in remote places due to pastoral settings were believed to be peaceful and calming and that people who had mental illness did not want to be seen in the community just like criminals in the correctional facilities (Woodside & McClam, 2015). This is understandable since during the times when human service delivery was done in an institutional based setting it was the responsibility of the church and the government did not have a lot of involvement. Institutionalizing those with mental illness could lead to behaviors that may be worse than their normal behaviors since they have no other interaction with others that are not mentally ill or their treatment provider’s. Institutionalizing those with mental illness causes them to be restricted from everyday life and an environment that may help them function better that is why we have shifted to the community based delivery since the goal is to be able to enable clients to interact with their environment with the least amount of restrictions and still function (Woodside & McClam, 2015). With the community based setting the focus has been the treatment of health and wellness instead of the illness giving …show more content…
The increased use of technology has also allowed better advancement of those services along with the ability of human service workers to have a database available to them so that they are able to deliver the services in all the settings that are used. Human Service delivery is not just done in a normal office it is done out in the community, at health care facilities, in schools, in military settings and in many rural settings which allows a large population of people to be have access to the assistance that they need, which would not have been available if we did not evolve from an institutional based setting to a community based