Lost Children, Lost Voices: A Critical Examination of Community Interagency Services.

Members of the academic and intellectual community are often faced with the dilemma of finding themselves inured to the lives of the individuals for whom they profess advocacy. Drawing on the real-life experiences of children and families in need, this paper places social-service agencies, professionals, and services within their historical and social contexts. The paper argues that the professionalization of the human service disciplines and the adherence to positivist research methodology has resulted in the social construction of clients and the pervasive use of the medical model. Further, the union of human-service professionals with bureaucratic structures is anathema to client-centered, collaborative practice. The human-service system must be transformed through a redefinition of traditional conceptions of child/family/client-centered, collaborative practice. Possibilities for reframing human services include: (1) community-based programming, which prevents the removal of children from homes and/or communities; (2) human-service professionals who function as enablers and advocates; (3) parallel agencies that coexist at a single, nonhierarchical site; (4) the empowerment of clients to solve their own problems; and (5) value given to the ethic of caring. Contains 40 references. (LMI)