Career opportunities for educators are growing in human resource development departments of business and industry. These careers call on the competencies of teachers in their roles as human service specialists and instructional systems designers. A program created to prepare students for such careers at Northeastern Illinois University is…

Compares two styles of test interpretation, delivered and interactive, in ongoing career counseling for 26 university honors students. Results indicate that clients who received an interactive interpretation considered their sessions to be deeper and their counselors to be more expert, trustworthy, and attractive than did clients who received a…

Survey of 124 vocational rehabilitation (VR) counselors in 14 states examined characteristics of American Indian and Alaska Native VR clients with alcoholism or drug abuse problems, aspects of the counselor-client relationship, VR services provided, minimum period of sobriety required, counselor training and training needs, and ratings of…

Presents an overview of 12 reframing strategies that employment counselors have found to be useful. The strategies are organized along a temporal dimension to help organize them and are designed to support clients by facilitating a change of perspective. Discusses positive affirmation, externalizing the problem, decision making, and other…

Lesbian and gay volunteers (N=392) described their experiences with 923 therapists. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual therapists of both genders, and heterosexual female therapists, were rated more helpful than heterosexual male therapists. Participants also reported whether each therapist exhibited nine negative and four positive practices; such…

Critiques recent efforts to improve the capacity of human service institutions to meet the needs of urban youth, and identifies the dissonance between the risk factors associated with these youth's cultural identities and the norms of the social institutions serving them. Discusses ways of overcoming this dissonance. (GR)

The Client Interaction Scale is a 12-item assessment tool for measuring client integration into the client-to-client interactive milieu in community support programs for persons with chronic mental illness. Results from administration of the scale to 95 clients indicate that the scale shows excellent inter-item reliability. (TJH)

The role of psychologists in helping families of the one in five Americans suffering from mental illness is described. The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill has been active in bridge building between psychologists and families through enhanced communication and improvements in support systems. An agenda of 15 recommendations for further…

Explored effects of Native-American undergraduate students' (N=84) cultural commitment on preference for ethnically similar counselors. Found degree of cultural commitment significantly affected preferences for counselor ethnicity as well as expectations about counseling, in that subjects reporting strong commitments to culture expected more…

Examines the impact of federal funding cutbacks on operations of 12 nonprofit social service agencies in 6 rural Ohio counties. Finds that mega-agencies have broadened their clientele, service offerings, and funding sources, while smaller agencies are squeezed. Discusses effects on service delivery effectiveness, local priorities, and public…

Evaluation research, if appropriately matched to a human service program's stage of development, can help inform the decision making at each step. The developmental stages of a program, questions to be answered at each stage, and kinds of research activities pertinent to such questions are discussed. (TJH)

Implementation of a speechreading program for hearing-impaired adults should consider: program clients; presentation of concepts such as differences between lipreading and speechreading and factors affecting speechreading; program structure including client needs assessments, individual/group therapy, length and termination of treatment, etc.;…

Interviews with 74 rural community professionals assessed family preservation services available during a 2-year pilot project in 3 rural areas of Kansas and compared family preservation services to traditional child welfare services. Respondents viewed family preservation projects as highly valued services, focusing on the projects' informality,…

Describes the Community Systems initiative, a collaborative project underway in Ontario to involve neighborhood residents, broad community networks, government, and nongovernmental organizations in the support of children and families. The initiative's goal is to improve the well-being of children, youth, and their families by finding ways to use…

Addresses the need for cultural sensitivity by social workers in practice and research. Discusses the need for professional self-examination and awareness of personal biases and prejudices to enhance sensitivity to cultural diversity. Also addresses issues surrounding cultural sensitivity in the context of client-participant attendance, needs,…