Community Support Skill Standards
Creating Pathways to Careers in Human Services
Framing Competencies for Direct Service Workers
What are they?
The Community Skill Standards define the competencies used by direct service workers in a wide variety of service contexts in community settings across the nation. Designed to be relevant to diverse direct service roles (residential, vocational, therapeutic, etc.), the standards are based upon a nationally validated job analysis involving a wide variety of human service workers, consumers, providers and educators.
What will they do?
The Community Support Skill Standards provide comprehensive descriptions of worker roles and responsibilities in twelve critical areas of competence such as Participant Empowerment, Community Networking and Advocacy.
Enhanced with illustrative scenarios and performance measures, the standards provide organizational leaders, trainers, educators and policy makers with the architecture for a comprehensive work force development plan.
The shift in the focus of human services away from large institutions to increasingly decentralize, sometimes neighborhood based, community settings has placed new demands on human service providers and workers.
Workers must know how to work with consumers and families to weave together a vast array of community resources, specialized assistance and natural supports to promote well-being, empowerment and community membership. These workers require training in a new framework of skills that incorporates the profound changes shaping the field, and assures them a viable future in the human services field.
Human Services Research Institute
The Human Services Research Institute (HSRI) is a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation founded in 1976 and based in Cambridge, MA. Through research, policy and demonstration activities, HSRI assists communities and government to build supports that are responsive to the aspirations and preferences of people who rely on human services to lead self-directed lives.
The development of these standards represents a national effort guided by a coalition of leading stakeholders including:
- Council for Standards in Human Services Education
- Child Welfare League of America
- Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (CCD)
- American Network of Community Options and Resources (ANCOR)
- National Association of State Directors of Vocational Technical Education Consortium
- The ARC National Headquarters
- American Association of Community Colleges
- Service Employees International Union
- The National Assembly of National Voluntary Health and Social Welfare Organizations, Inc.
- National Organization for Human Services Education
- National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services, Inc.
- National Association of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Counselors Certification Commission
- International Association of Psychosocial Rehabilitation Services
To order the Community Support Skill Standards, please send check or money order to:
Human Services Research Institute
Attn: Skill Standards
2336 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02140
(617) 876-0426
The price is $20.00 each and $12.50 for NOHS members.
Read more
Visit the HSRI web site for more information on the Community Support Skill Standards Project.