Category Archives: Post Human

Todays human services agencies are under pressure to deliver high levels of service with fewer resources. Although the budget crunch has been challenging, it has brought out the best in todays human services administrators. By harnessing technology and taking some tips from the private sector, human services agencies are creating new and innovative ways to get help to those who need it. Many human services managers begin as social workers who choose to investigate their career options and use their one-on-one successes with clients to bring broader changes at the agency level. As a result, particularly in five primary areas, service delivery may look quite different a decade from now.

(image source: flickr.com)

Expanded Partnerships Instead of looking at social services delivery as a government-only function, many human services managers are building a larger ecosystem that includes community action groups, private companies, not-for-profit agencies and non-governmental organizations. These partnerships provide added resources when state and local governments are strapped for cash, and they bring in external stakeholders to meet human services goals.

The Iowa Department of Human Services, for example, has created the Youth Dream Team program to help kids aging out of the foster system to make a smooth transition into adulthood. Young adults who ask to develop a dream team are connected to an approved facilitator, a peer advocate who has aged out of foster care and gone through the Dream Team process, team members of the young persons choosing and a coach that coordinates meetings. Together, the team creates an action plan to help the young person meet transitional goals including finding housing, getting a job and enrolling in higher education. The Department of Human Services coordinates the meetings, but the team members are volunteers from the community and the foster care system.

Social Investing In New York, a partnership between Merrill Lynch, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) and other stakeholders has created a $13.5 million social impact bond overseen by Social Finance, Inc. The funds will finance CEO programs that provide training and employment services to formerly incarcerated individuals in New York. Both the U.S. Department of Labor and the State of New York will make outcomes-based payments to investors, and investors will recoup their money if recidivism drops by 8 percent and if employment increases by 5 percent. If the program exceeds expectations, then investors will receive returns based on the savings realized by public sector agencies.

Predictive Analytics Predictive analytics can help human services agencies anticipate where to direct their resources. The Pennsylvania Bureau of Child Support Enforcement, for example, uses predictive analytics to score a non-custodial parents likelihood to pay child support based on age, employment status, residential stability and other factors. Instead of waiting for the parent to fall behind on payments before taking action, the bureau can connect the parent with job training or placement to prevent lapse of payments before they happen.

Learning From the Private Sector In addition to partnering with the private sector to achieve human services aims, many human services agencies can learn from how the private sector operates. One major area of improvement could come from observing how the private sector recruits and trains new employees. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services undertook a major hiring initiative in 2011 focused on streamlining their hiring process, cutting time to hire, letting more agency managers get involved in hiring and increasing applicant satisfaction.

Serving the Whole Person In Massachusetts, the states Housing and Shelter Alliance has developed the Home & Healthy for Good program (HHG) to address chronic homelessness. The program starts by finding homes for homeless people and then treats issues including mental illness, substance abuse and other disabilities, which keep the homeless from finding both housing and work. So far, the program has placed 678 chronically homeless people into housing with supportive services, reducing the governments yearly cost per homeless individual from $33,582 to $24,118. HHG is one example of how meeting the needs of the whole person can provide both cost savings and better service delivery.

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5 Ways Human Services May Look Different in 10 Years

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Authorities are considering putting "slavery spotters" into British airports, to watch for human trafficking. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

LONDON British authorities are posting slavery spotters in London Heathrow Airport, in a bid to monitor and stop human traffickers.

Border Forces will be stationed at the airport beginning April 1, and Britain's second and third busiest airports beginning later in the year. Authorities are looking for not just slavery, but also slavery-like practices such asdebt bondage, forced marriage and the sale or exploitation of children.

Our frontline Border Force officers are aware that they could be the first authority figure in the UK to have contact with a potential victim of modern slavery, saidKaren Bradley, Britain's new modern slavery and organized crime minister.

Their role is vital in identifying and protecting victims and ensuring there is no easy route into the UK for traffickers.She said they would be supported by the National Crime Agency, Britain's equivalent of the FBI, which will bring its child protection expertise to bear in cases involving children.

The government hopes to get the draft Modern Slavery Bill into law before the general election in May 2015. It would introduce tougher sentences for human traffickers.

The inaugural Global Slavery Index, published in October by the Walk Free Foundation estimated there were 4,200 to 4,600 people in modern slavery in Britain.

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Britain to post slavery spotters at airports

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Crysis 2 von Crytek -- Herausgeber : Electronic Arts -- Musik : Hans Zimmer.

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Supporters of human rights in China are growing skeptical over the annual discussions on human rights between China and Australia. Rather than improve the situation, Human Rights Watch (HRW) claims the dialogues often have the opposite effect.

Not only has the dialogue failed to produce tangible results, it appears that it has over the years actually become a vehicle for China to shape the Australian government views on human rights in China and how human rights issues should be addressed in bi- and multi-lateral settings, states a submission from HRW to Australias Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The dialogue that HRW refers to is the Australia-China Human Rights Dialogue, and the 15th dialogue since 1997 was held in Beijing on Feb. 20 local time.

This years dialogue is particularly important since it comes at a critical time for human rights in China as the government escalates one of the most intense crackdowns in the past 20 years against human rights defenders and government critics, states a release from HRW.

The dialogue is also the first under Australias new prime minister, Tony Abbott. Activists are hoping Australia changes its history of inaction.

Chinas deteriorating human rights situation has justifiably raised skepticism about the utility of bilateral rights dialogues with the Chinese government, said Elaine Pearson, Australia director at Human Rights Watch, in the release.

Coverage of 2014 Meeting

Going by news coming out from the meetings, however, the dialogue doesnt seem to have improved much from previous years.

Coverage on the meeting by the Australian press focused almost entirely on the Chinese government criticizing Australia for its treatment of asylum seekers, and with an apparent complete absence of information on Chinas human rights abuses.

Chinas state-run Xinhua newspaper reported that both sides introduced their latest achievements in protecting and promoting human rights, and the dialogue was positive, frank and fruitful.

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New PM, Same Old Story at China-Australian Human Rights Dialogue

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Photo: Human Rights Watch

Children play on plots of land to house families who were relocated to make room for mining.

Freetown The government of Sierra Leone and a mining company that is the country's largest private employer have undermined villagers' access to food and prevented workers from challenging abusive practices, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The government should ensure that economic development projects in the booming post conflict nation do not come at the expense of the human rights of local populations.

The 96-page report, "Whose Development?: Human Rights Abuses in Sierra Leone's Mining Boom," documents how the government and London-based African Minerals Limited forcibly relocated hundreds of families from verdant slopes to a flat, arid area in Tonkolili District. As a result, residents lost their ability to cultivate crops and engage in income generating activities that once sustained them. Police carried out a bloody crackdown in the town of Bumbuna in April 2012 to quell a protest by workers who went on strike after being barred from forming a union of their own choosing.

"With investors flocking to Sierra Leone, the government has an opportunity to promote development for its desperately poor population," said Rona Peligal, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "But the African Minerals Limited case shows that, unless the government puts a stop to mining operation abuses, the people who most need to benefit from development will be excluded from it."

Human Rights Watch interviewed close to 100 people in Sierra Leone for the report, and researched the operations of African Minerals Limited over an 18-month period, beginning in July 2012. Human Rights Watch met with the company's leadership in February 2013, and corresponded with these directors until their departure from the firm in August. In January 2014, Human Rights Watch wrote to the company's new management to update findings and request information, but has received no reply.

Sierra Leone is an impoverished West African country still recovering from a catastrophic civil war that ended in 2002. African Minerals Limited, which began mining diamonds in Sierra Leone in 1996, built its Tonkolili mine on what is regarded as one of the largest deposits of magnetite in Africa, a type of iron ore. The company exports the ore to steelmakers in China.

The Sierra Leonean government, while promoting the company's operations as essential to Sierra Leone's economic development, permitted corporate actions that violated the rights of Tonkolili's residents, Human Rights Watch found. For example, the government failed to provide adequate oversight of the company's consultations with local communities or respond to repeated complaints about the forced relocation of residents. Both the government and the company misled villagers about what would happen once they were moved to the new site.

"The company went to the paramount chief, and the paramount chief told us what to do. We asked so many questions. What they told us they would do, they have not done.... It was a trap," one village elder told Human Rights Watch. "They said, 'It will be paradise for you,' but it's completely different."

The government also did not take action in response to apparent African Minerals Limited violations of Sierra Leone labor laws concerning employment, termination, and benefits for its workers. The government's narrow reading of national labor law as well as political wrangling denied the company's workers the ability to form a union of their choosing, rather than belong to an established union that the workers regarded as ineffectual.

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Sierra Leone: Mining Boom Brings Rights Abuses

[This is a review ofBeing Humanseason 4, episode 6. There will be SPOILERS.]

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Though they want to do better, it sometimes feels like Aidan (Sam Witwer) and Josh (Sam Huntington) are bound to do worse. For the entire run of this show, vampirism has been treated like an addiction while the wolf gene has been treated like a communicable disease. Both un-kickable, both a pox on their shared house.

On last nightsBeing Human, the seemingly cursed dwelling of the vampire, the werewolf, and the ghost faced its latest threat a motivated seller in the form of Sallys brother Robbie (Jesse Rath, Meaghan Raths real life brother). But while that challenge to the status-quo (brought on by flaky Robbies latest financial ship running-a-ground) inspired forces from within the shadows to rear their head, the main characters life-plagues did the most damage.

As has been said before in these reviews, Nora has been guilty of reaching for something approaching a normal life this season, but here, Josh seems to call her bluff, pushing hard for a move away from the house and from Aidan and Sally toward their future when Robbie tells the group that they have 30 days to vacate the premises or buy the house from Sallys family for $300k.

The wind already knocked out of Nora, she tries to promise tomorrow while Josh nervously demands today, but what she doesnt know is that his evolving willingness to get normal comes from his latest failure to control his wolf. Though were spared the site of seeingBeing Humans poorly rendered werewolves canoodling, a tryst is implied between Joshs wolf and Wendys during the change. Who is Wendy? Remember Mark the alpha-wolf? She is his special lady and though the interlude happened during wolf-time, the two do wake up next to each other in the buff and Wendy seems far more comfortable with the situation than Josh is, though to be fair, Josh hasnt seemed comfortable once duringBeing Humans entire run.

Its interesting that, blinded by guilt and fear, Josh seeks out Aidan for romantic advice, though his decision to bring honesty into his relationship with Kat may have had something to do with that. Sitting in a bar next to the returned Suzanna (Aidans vampire killing first wife who is also a vampire) Aidan advises Josh to keep his secret from Nora, words emanating from a place of regret over that now shattered relationship with Kat no doubt, but words that also find their way to Suzanna, who flashes back to her own awful secret that she is keeping from Aidan.

It doesnt seem likely that Suzanna is pondering a change in her strategy, though, not when she has Aidan on the ropes, starved for blood and feeling heart-sick. Aidan once again speaks of wanting a normal life, something that he knew when he was with Suzanna before his change to vampire kind. He knows that with Kat gone and his new family about to splinter that feels far away and so he reaches out for the closest thing to normal that he can find in the form of Suzanna, promising to live a life faithful to her bloodless code if she walks a similar but very different line, abstaining from killing vampires. Naturally, he quickly fails (too quickly?) recreating one of the first glimpses into Aidans darker side that we saw in the shows pilot episode. That was a nice touch, but Aidans quick backslide feels too quick in light of his promise and his general good-guy nature, making it seem as though he never intended on keeping his word to Suzanna who will surely come back with ferocity over his broken promise.

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Being Human: Cheater of the Pack