Human Service Role In Child Abuse

Human Service Role Human services professionals play a major part in helping from every angle of child abuse. Everyone from the victim, to the perpetrator, and other members of the family need help. There are many local agencies that is in place to help the struggles of child abuse. “The wide range of activities in which a human service professional might engage within a child and family services agency, there is also a wide range of practice settings where the human service professional might work, the largest being a state’s child protective services (CPS) agency” (Martin, 2014, p.82).

After the detection of child abuse, it is pertinent that the proper steps be taken to assess the situations. There must be a thorough investigation to

99). In the mist of this placement, there will be a in depth approach to the severity of the abuse, whether the parents are competent of retaining their child, and most important the caseworker will look at what is in the best interest for the child. In many cases the children may reconnect with the parent that is not abusive. If neither parent can obtain the child, then the caseworker will go through drastic measures to place the child is a place where they could develop as a functioning human being. According to Martin (2014), some of the other options are: “Living with relatives, guardianship with close friends, short-term or long-term foster care, emancipation (with older adolescents), and adoption with termination of parental rights” (p. 99). However, the best option for any case, is the option that is best for the child. Moreover, the child has already suffered a lot of anguish, therefore, it is pertinent to make the decision to promote stability in the child’s life. Recently, there have been state, and federal mandates to go against reunification with the biological families. These mandates were established to protect the child from further damage (Martin,

In the grand scheme, “Foster care can refer to many placement settings, including kinship, care, an emergency shelter, a residential treatment center, a group home, or even an independent living situation (with older adolescents), but most frequently foster care involves placing a child with a licensed foster family (two-parent or single-parent family)” (Martin, p. 109). Consequently, there are negative ramification of placing a child in foster care. There is a high level of children that are placed in foster care each year. It is sad to say that all of the children that are placed there never receive permanent placement. According to researchers, “The median length of stay in foster care for children who are reunified with their biologic families is 8 months, but 13% of child in the child welfare system will never achieve permanency, particularly those who have been diagnosed with disability, who entered care as a teenager, or who have been in care for more than 24 months” (Lockwood, Friedman, & Christian, 2015, p. 306). Because of this, it is a hard task for human service professional to place children, and the children sometimes because a statistic of other issues. Some of the child becomes drug abuse, run-aways, and some become criminals. Moreover, the heart of the human service professional is to seek placement for children, whether it’s with their biological family, or possible in a place where they could