The History Of Human Services: Tracing The Development Of Some Major Contemporary Service Patterns

THE HISTORY OF HUMAN SERVICES: TRACING THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOME MAJOR CONTEMPORARY SERVICE PATTERNS, & SOME UNIVERSAL LESSONS WHICH CAN BE LEARNED FROM THIS HISTORY

Co-Sponsored by The Southern Ontario Training Group and Rygiel Supports for Community Living

PRESENTERS: Susan Thomas, Training Coordinator at the Training Institute for Human Service Planning, Leadership, and Change Agentry, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York; and Dr. Thomas Malcomson, Toronto, Ontario.

DATES & TIMES: 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. each day, Thursday, October 12 & Friday, October 13, 2023. The doors open at 9:30 and the presentation starts promptly at 10:00 a.m., please be sure to arrive on time.

PLACE: Thornhill Public Library, 7755 Bayview Avenue, Thornhill (at John Street and Bayview Ave)

DESCRIPTION: Using a great many images, this two-part presentation documents the evolution of major human service concepts and practices, from ancient, informal, voluntary, unpaid personal helping forms to the largely commercialized patterns that we see today. Especially, illustrations of human service settings will be used to show what the service patterns and assumptions were in a given era, and how they changed over time.

Day One of the presentation will sketch important early antecedents of current human service patterns, and will show that the history of human services of all types is inextricably intertwined with the history of care for the poor, and of residential services. The evolution of human services into the late Medieval period will be traced, and the impact of the collapse of medieval services due to political, economic, cultural, and other changes in the 16th and 17th centuries will be explained, leading to much segregation and brutalization of the people served.

Day Two of the presentation will explain how services became alienated from their valued cultural roots and analogues, and how service recipients of all kinds began to be interpreted as menaces and treated accordingly. As well, the impact of the materialistic worldview that arose in the 18th century will be presented. At the end of Day Two, many lessons from this historical review will be drawn.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND: This workshop is relevant to everyone who plans or provides support to vulnerable people, including those providing voluntary, informal supports such as family members, members of circles of support, advocates; those providing paid, formal support such as direct service workers, clinicians, funders; and those at the highest planning levels such as board members, funders, managers, executive directors, administrators, policy makers, and analysts. Attendance at this workshop can help anyone gain a better understanding of the service challenges that confront them, some of the dangers that lurk everywhere, and what sorts of service patterns to strive for. One main purpose of the presentation is consciousness-raising, and people who have attended this presentation in the past have remarked that it did fundamentally alter their perception of many human service patterns, and that it helped them to understand--often for the first time--some of the things they had witnessed, or of which they were a part, or to which they had contributed.

FORMAT: For each day, the entire morning, and part of the afternoon, are devoted to presentation of content, which is very visual: lots of pictures and overhead transparencies. This is followed each day by an open-ended period for questions-and-discussion for the remainder of the afternoon. Each day there will be a break for lunch and short breaks in mid-morning and mid-afternoon. The highly sequential nature of the material requires that only those who have attended Day 1 will be admitted to Day 2.

WORKSHOP FEE: $250.00 per person. Some partial subsidies are available; contact Thomas Malcomson, thomasmalcomson5@gmail.com

Please send the following information and fees to SOTGregistration@dafrs.com 

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PAYMENT Fee: $250 

1. Send $250 via e-transfer to SOTGRegistration@dafrs.com and indicate “History of Human Services workshop” in the email. 

OR 

2. If needed, mail a cheque for $250 payable to SOTG to: SOTG c/o DFRS 850 King Street West, #20 Oshawa, ON L1J 8N5