Human Services – Board Certified Practitioner

After an application for the HS-BCP credential is submitted, individuals who meet all of the requirements including education and experience will be eligible to sit for the exam. The exam will not represent information only (what recent graduates will know), but also knowledge based on experience (what experienced human services workers know). So, individuals without the experience component will be ineligible for the credential until they have met the experience requirement.

These applicants must have completed a minimum of 15 semester hours (22.5 quarter hours) of coursework in one or more of the 11 content areas listed below, including at least two semester hours (three quarter hours) in ethics in the helping professions, two semester hours (three quarter hours) in interviewing and interpersonal skills, and two semester hours (three quarter hours) in case management. The 11 content areas are:

• Interviewing and Interpersonal Skills
• Group Work
• Case Management
• Human Development
• Ethics in the Helping Professions
• Social and Cultural Issues
• Social Problems
• Assessment/Treatment Planning
• Intervention Models/Theories
• Human Behavior
• Social Welfare/Public Policy

Interviewing and Interpersonal Skills: Studies that develop the knowledge, values and skills necessary for providing effective assistance to individuals and client systems, including verbal, non-verbal, and written messages. Skills emphasized are interviewing, listening, attending to patient/client verbal and non-verbal cues, problem definition, negotiation, confrontation, and written documentation. Will include information about essential communication skills required to work effectively as a human services practitioner, development of these skills, and recognition of the limitation of various modes of communication. May include coursework that focuses on interventions to promote individual and family health and common approaches to therapy, and therapeutic communications for healthcare professionals. May include crisis intervention, and the theoretical &and practical understanding of human crises.

Group Work: Studies providing an understanding of group dynamics and group facilitation. Group approaches, context, developmental process, and the skills required to become an effective group facilitator are included, as are cultural contexts and behavior patterns of individuals within groups. Studies include ethical considerations, valuing diversity, and managing conflict. May include theories and techniques of group therapy, specialty and support groups, psycho-educational groups, and other types of groups. Group studies frequently provide a direct experience in planning, participating in, and leading a group session. How groups are used in human services.

Case Management: Studies include collaborative processes to assess, plan, implement, coordinate, monitor, and evaluate the options and services required to meet the client's health and human service needs. Includes advocacy, communication, and resource management promoting quality and cost-effective interventions and outcomes. Covers the development of problem solving communications and the ability to effectively document. Promotes the ability to prioritize within a deadline driven environment, case load management approaches, and outcome assessment. Provides an understanding of the administrative functions that allow treatment to be facilitated through written correspondence as well as technology related programs or systems. May include use the basic assessment methods and interventions to enable development of initial treatment plans and facilitate client referral to the appropriate resources.

Human Development: Studies providing an understanding of the nature and needs of individuals at all developmental levels, normal and abnormal human development; theories of development; psychosocial, cognitive, emotional interpersonal, and moral development concepts. Explains why an understanding of human development is important to human services practitioners. Topics include infant, child, adolescent and young adult development, career changes at various stages of adulthood, midlife issues, parenthood, decline in health, establishing new life patterns after retirement, and the end life cycle.

Ethics in the Helping Professions: Studies providing an understanding of ethical and legal standards necessary for human services practitioners. Focus includes confidentiality of information between practitioner and client population, least intrusive intervention in the least restrictive environment, the worth and uniqueness of individuals including culture, ethnicity, race, class, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation, and other expressions of diversity. Integration of the ethical standards outlined by the National Organization for Human Services (NOHS) and/or the Human Services-Board Certified Practitioner credential. Includes theoretical and historical background of ethics for human services with attention to philosophical traditions. Approaches to values are distinguished, e.g., philosophical, psychological and interdisciplinary.

Social and Cultural Issues: Studies related to matters affecting different cultures and the importance of respecting and appreciating cultural diversity. Social issues include but are not limited to human rights, race and gender issues, welfare, poverty, violence against women/children and homelessness. Cultural issues include religious differences, stereotyping and profiling, crime, gang issues, and other issues stemming from widely held beliefs and misunderstandings among cultures. Includes information about beliefs and thought processes related to social and cultural issues and influences fundamental to these issues.

Social Problems: Studies of conditions that society views as being undesirable and that require resources to address, including family based social problems; economic and political problems; social inequality (social stratification, poverty, race and ethnicity, sex and sexism, age and ageism), deviant behavior, crime and the criminal justice system, mental disorders, substance abuse, etc. Primary consideration of social problems from systems perspective. May include the perspective of social pathology, symbolic interactionism, labeling, and deviance. Focus on the interrelatedness of human service organizations as amelioration systems which attempt to apply problem-solving strategies. Development of social policy through which society attempts to manage and control social and cultural issues and the role of the human services practitioner in influencing social welfare policy.

Assessment/Treatment Planning: Coursework examining a variety of assessment and testing methods, advanced interviewing procedures, and observational techniques used in treatment planning and evaluation of outcomes in the human service setting. Includes appraisals of cognitive, affective, social, vocational, interests/aptitude, and achievement, the ethical use of assessment instruments, and using assessment data to create and implement treatment plans.

Intervention Models/Theories: Studies of models and theories of effective interventions that are used in work as a human services practitioner. Theoretical approaches addressing the question of when it is desirable not to intervene and when it is appropriate to do so. The effectiveness of different types of intervention. Interventions may include but are not limited to solution focused, task centered, 7-stage crisis intervention, genomes, reframing, paradox, parent training, and structural techniques.

Human Behavior: Studies providing an understanding of the ranges of normal and abnormal human behavior and the environmental contexts in which these behaviors occur. The effect of the environment on behavior and the effect of behavior of the individual on the environment and on others around him/her. May include information about addictive behavior and mental processes, criminal behaviors, delinquency, psychological disorders, etc.

Social Welfare/Public Policy: Coursework providing an understanding of social welfare problems and policies, including the nature of social problems and the external influences that are fundamental to the creation and establishment of social welfare policies in the United States. Based in the human service’s emphasis on the person-in-the-environment, and working from practitioners understanding of the nature of social problems and their effects. Includes the human services practitioner’s responsibilities with regard to development and implementation of welfare policies and programs created in response to social problems.