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Short lecture on methods and strategies.
1. We went over the direct-service strategies first, where the
help is directed at changing either the person or the person's
environment.
Because we were rushed, I didn't have a chance to go into the following
aspects of direct-service change:
Human problems are viewed from intrapersonal, interpersonal,
and extrapersonal perspectives.
- The intrapersonal approach looks to genetic, disease or
biologically-based psychological developmental processes to explain
the origins of behavior that falls outside of the range of what
is considered 'normal'. However, these approaches are 'deterministic'
in that they see human behavior as a product solely of genetic and
environmental forces; they don't fully account for individual
differences and subjective factors in the outcomes of these processes.
The main intrapersonal approaches include:
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Organic (or biological) causes
include both genetic and environmental factors. |
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Psychodynamic processes are based on
developmental theories which are hard to prove scientifically
but which embrace a commonly accepted notion that early
childhood conditions act upon individuals with differing degrees
of vulnerability and resilience with lasting effects upon their
eventual adult personality . |
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Psychological causes (distortions of
self-concept or the results of the learning processes) |
- The interpersonal approach focuses on problems of
relationships between the individual and the important other people
involved in his/her life. Marital problems or family crises are common
focuses for this type of approach.
- The extrapersonal approach is one in which the cause of an
individual's problem is sought in the culture or society rather
than the individual. The origins of the label of 'abnormal' lie in
what is 'deviant' from the 'normal' (accepted) standards of behavior.
Some dimensions of the extrapersonal approaches include:
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Cultural/societal causality, in which roles
impose self-definitions based on granted roles
(sex, age, family relationships) and achieved roles, some
of which are valued, some of which are
deviant. Achieved roles are often labels given and reinforced
for stereotyped behaviors that are the product
of social conditions. (Example: if a person is homeless
because he lost his job, he looks
and smells 'like a bum' and is treated by those he encounters as
if he were a 'bum', one who cannot
hold a job, doesn't want a nice place to live and wouldn't
know how to care for it if he had one, etc) |
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Cultural variations on how to 'do' a
role cause people from one culture to judge the behavior
of people who are acting out a role as defined by another
to be deviant, 'abnormal'. (To the people I worked
with who had lived for years a the state hospital, stealing was
normal, a common adaptive response to the
conditions under which they lived. Outside the hospital,
they would be seen as 'thieves' rather than survivors
who had found a way to get what they needed.) |
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There are problems for this approach as well as
for the solely interpersonal approaches. For one, this idea of
society's assignment of 'roles' does not account for the most
extreme levels of deviance. Also, norms vary for each of our
several reference groups and can conflict with each other, yet
we manage to move between these various roles without becoming
necessarily typecast. For instance, what is 'normal' in the gang
of punk rockers that a teenager belongs to is deviant in
the larger society of his home, family and school, yet he may
manage to assume the correct behavior in each of these settings.
We also have to consider the fact that what may be done by most
people is not necessarily moral, healthy or legal. Sometimes
doing the 'right thing' is abnormal behavior. For instance, the
people who provided a 'safe house' to runaway slaves on the
Underground Railroad' were not doing what was considered normal
or acceptable by their particular culture. |
An integrated perspective.
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There is a natural solution for the field of human
services in resolving these different points of view: there is no
one primary explanation for human behavior, normal or
deviant. Instead, human behavior is viewed as being the result of many
interacting forces, some of which can be best understood by one
of the approaches mentioned above. An ecological synthesis is based
on two assumptions:
- that humans are interdependent with their environment
- and that the patterns of interactions between person and
environment are dynamically interwoven.
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This network of interacting forces that influence
human behavior is referred to as the Ecological Life Matrix. This
approach prevents simplistic explanations and their narrow solutions
in addressing human needs and problems. |
2. Some problems which are pervasive and recurring may be, in fact, a
result of societal conditions; any amount of direct service is only a
temporary solution as the problems will crop up again and again as long as
the conditions do not change. Under these conditions, the human service
approach is to address problems in the system itself. Systems change
involves researching, planning, implementing and administering new
programs, and assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of these efforts.
3. Often, given the multicausality of most human problems, the most
effective way to address a human service need combines both the direct
service and systems change, providing direct services while addressing the
extrapersonal environment to support the individual's efforts to change.
This involves doing outreach to make sure those in need can access
help, mobilizing support, accessing resources, and advocating for client's
needs, facilitating groups to address needs shared by a number of
individuals, and consulting with, assisting, and collaborating with
specialists who deliver specific narrowly defined services to the
individuals receiving services.
The chapter gave some examples of how strategies are designed to
address specific situations. We will discuss these as well as the next
chapter next Thursday in class.
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