What Human Service Workers Do

Request for Submissions

Project

An online edited book consisting of contributor chapters of 3-5 pages describing a day in their work life as Human Service professionals.  This project is designed to create a resource describing the range and diversity of what Human Service workers do on a day-by-day basis.  It will be particularly useful for students as a supplemental text for an introductory class in Human Services, but also for anyone who wants to explore the field. 

Purpose

Rather than going through the regular publishing process this project will allow students and the general public access to a free resource, supported by advertising,  providing career and job information in Human Services. In this project, the reader will be offered vignettes from persons representing the full spectrum of the profession. 

Who can contribute?

Anyone working in the helping field as a Human Services profession is invited to make a submission for consideration. This includes persons with degrees and/or backgrounds in human services, counseling, counseling psychology, educational psychology, social work, and other related fields.

Why should I participate?

Contributors will not be paid - each contribution is a voluntary submission.

The cost of higher education continues to rise faster than the more normative cost of living increases experienced in other economic sectors. Increasingly students, and their families, are paying more for their degrees and leaving higher education with a burdensome debt load as students depend more and more on loans rather than other forms of aide.  One contributor to that increasing cost is the text book publishing monopoly with frequent edition changes and high cost with the average student spending over $1000 per year for text books. 

Quality.  We believe we can offer better quality, as well as value, to students with collaboratively created and peer reviewed material available free of cost to the student. We can only do this if knowledgeable  professionals in the field will contribute their time and effort to provide material in which they have a special interest and expertise. 

The nature of the creative process is evolving.  No longer do we need to work alone on static projects.  Instead, the nature of work is shifting to a dynamic collaborative process. This is a philosophical statement inspired by the Open Source movement which values collaboration and a distributive workload rather than predatory pricing and marketing strategies.

Submission Format

Double spaced, 10 - 12 point font, 3 - 5 pages in length,  and native OpenOffice or Microsoft Word format.  RTF files will also be accepted.  Files will be reviewed by our editor for spelling, grammar and style. You will have the opportunity to review any suggested changes.

There should be four sections:

• What  you do in a typical day.  Provide a descriptive title.  This is by far the longest part of the submission, and make sure to describe your agency and what your agency does.  One great way to do this is to literally write about one specific day at your job as a human services professional.  
• How you got your job.  Two or three paragraphs describing how you obtained the job you are describing.
• Tips and Hints about how someone interested in your position could obtain the required experience, education, and credentials.  Make sure to specify what kind of credential/license is required.

• Name and short biography of four to six sentences including educational background and professional license and credentials. 

Do not identify your agency or your clients by name. Please send submissions to:  editor@freescholar.net
 

Each author needs to include the following statement, submissions will not be used without it,  on the bottom of their submission:
 

This submission is licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 (United States License)

We will supplement that statement with an icon linking back to the creative commons web site on all submissions that are accepted for publication. The details of the license are as follows:

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0

Each submission is required to have the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. You can view it online at:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/

This license makes the following stipulations regarding how others may use your work (this is information is directly from the Creative Commons web site:

• To Share – to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work.

• Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

• No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon the work.

This allows us to use it in the edited collection without owning it outright.

Contact & Submission

For Inquiries and more information you can contact:

Mike Perkins, MSW, LCSW at  mikeperkins@freescholar.net

Please send submissions to:  editor@freescholar.net

The web site is being developed at:  www.freescholar.net