Human Services Organization Observation Report

This week’s reading focuses on human services organizations and what is needed for organizations to function properly. Since I plan on into the Community and Administration Practice (CAP) concentration, I found Netting et al.’s (2012) chapter on assessing human services organizations to be very interesting. Throughout this reaction paper I will be referring to my experiences working at Jefferson Parish Human Services Authority (JPHSA), an agency in the Greater New Orleans area. This chapter starts off by discussing task one, which is to assess the organization’s environment, more specifically, who they serve, sources of funding and cultural competence. As I read this chapter, I found myself referring to my experiences working

One of the most important elements of task two that Netting et al. (2012) discussed, is that an organization’s authority helps define the domain in which the organization functions. Comparatively, at JPHSA, an important part of our agency wide and department meetings was to go over the mission statement, principles, and recently added procedures and policies the agency implemented. At these meetings, we would also go over any issues we had applying the recently adopted policies and procedures to ensure that they were a good fit for our programs and communities we served. Netting et al. (2012) mentioned three categories of management and leadership styles, one in which was the human resources model. Netting et al. (2012) goes on to say that the human resources model believes that employees work for the good of the population served and not solely for a paycheck, which leads to employees putting in more of an effort. Within my department at JPHSA, I worked as a substance abuse case manager and I believe that the human resources model best describes how the program was ran. As a case manager in the substance abuse program, we were given guidelines of what was to be expected of us, but could find resources, create treatment plans and make referrals for our clients without strict supervision. I also believe working in the community instead of an office, often leads to supervisors adopting this style of management. To have community-based programs, you need to be able to trust your employees to be able to do their work independently. The internal assessment of the human services organizations is essential in