This book captures the evolution of consumerism in the human services. By addressing the changing roles and contributions of consumers (those working within human service organizations and systems and those working outside of those organizations and systems) the author offers an encompassing framework of consumerism. This framework is multidimensional and incorporates multiple types and forms of consumerism. The author offers a rationale for consumerism in the human services, illustrates its evolution, and considers multiple perspectives and models culminating in policy considerations, including specific strategies. This book will equip consumers, survivors, practitioners, and policy makers with substantive knowledge of how to advance human services through action and innovation.

This volume addresses the promise and challenges of employment, service roles and contexts in rehabilitation and mental health practice, developing readiness for employment, sustaining employment, and responding to the needs of people coping with a range of disabilities. The book is relevant to the education of human service professionals, and will enable practitioners to expand their awareness, understanding, and knowledge of the interface of rehabilitation and mental health.

This book will advance readers' understanding of the knowledge development, building and/or management process within human service organizations, informed by the author's experience in human service organizations, as consultant, and practitioner. Readers can come to understand the knowledge building process, and gain a conceptual framework in building organizational knowledge for the advancement of human services practice. The importance of knowledge management in social welfare and human service is twofold. Knowledge management is about an organization managing what it knows in order to achieve more competent and more effective performance. It also is about how domains and fields of practice may transform themselves over time through the purposeful creation and destruction of knowledge. Knowledge management can be a cornerstone of today's human service and social welfare organizations and may be a principal strategy for effecting innovation and evolution in the ways societies address and meet human needs.