- Published: December 18, 2021
- Updated: December 18, 2021
- University / College: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Language: English
- Downloads: 10
The main goal of human service workers is to enhance a person’s well being. It gives a person great satisfaction to know that they accomplished their goal by successfully helping another. The feeling is so great that most human service workers work in that field more for the ability to help others then for the money. However, aside from this goal, some of human service workers’ personal qualities can make a big difference in their practice. Obtaining empathy and being able to separate it from sympathy is a great and necessary thing for human service workers. Accurate empathy is correctly perceiving the feelings of another person without being captured by the victim’s emotions. Sympathy however, is actually feeling what the victim feels. This may prevent him/her from being objective n a helping relationship, since he/she is likely to be caught up in the victim’s emotions. The key to accurate empathy is understanding the pain of the victim while remaining in a neutral position. Another quality that is massively important is trust. Without trust it is almost impossible to accomplish anything at all. A patient will most likely not open up if he/she doesn’t feel like they can trust their helper. Gaining trust might be one of the hardest things to do and it may take a lot of time however, it is the only way for the human service worker to help the patient accomplish something. An additional important quality that a human service worker must possess is a nonjudgmental attitude. While they are not expected to agree with or approve of the values and behaviors of other people, it is imperative that the HS Worker communicates in a nonjudgmental attitude toward others. To conclude, empathy (not sympathy), trust and a nonjudgemental attitude are important qualities that human service workers must possess in order to be successful at reaching their goal of helping others.