Research in the Community

Throughout this course, you have worked on a course project designed to help you identify human services in your community and determine how such services meet the needs of certain at-risk populations, including people living in poverty, children and adolescents, the disabled, AIDS and HIV patients, the elderly, the homeless, victims of abuse, battered women, substance abusers, people with mental illnesses, and offenders.

You first identified an agency for use in your course project. You developed a list of questions for an interview with a human services professional in a chosen agency. You made revisions to your questions based on facilitator feedback for your interview. You then conducted your interview with the key human services professional working at the agency. In addition, you carried out additional research on the agency using the library, local resources, and the Internet.

For this assignment, complete and submit a PowerPoint presentation on the selected agency/organization. Apply the theories covered in the readings of this course to analyze the institution. Include the following in your presentation:

• Identify the agency/organization and describe its mission statement.
• Describe the role or position of the human services professional interviewed.
• List and describe the range or types of services the agency/organization provides.
• Describe the population the agency/organization serves and explain the broader social needs and issues that affect this population.
• Describe how the agency/organization is staffed and its funding sources.
• Recommend training for staff based on analysis of information. Make sure you address ethical standards specific to the population/s they serve.
• Focusing on the population of clients served at the agency/organization, describe what you have learned about how those clients are influenced or affected by events and decisions at 1) the selected agency/organization, 2) your local community, 3) national or global society.
• Explain whether you would want to work at the agency and, if yes, the position you would like to hold and why.
• Describe what you have learned about yourself in the context of completing this assignment (your preconceptions, experiences, and insights about certain populations, services, or agencies).
• Use the PowerPoint notes feature to include comprehensive speaker notes for your presentation. Include your references on one slide. Include graphs and tables where appropriate.