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Human Services Guide

This guide will introduce you to Human Services and Social Work reference resources, books, journals, web sites and more.

Established Interventions

In human services, a clearinghouse for interventions is a centralized, authoritative resource that collects, reviews, and shares information about programs, practices, and interventions. The purpose is to help practitioners, policymakers, and researchers know which interventions are evidence-based, promising, or ineffective, so they can make informed decisions when selecting or funding services.

Key features of clearinghouses:

  • Evidence review: They assess the strength and quality of research behind different interventions.
  • Ratings: Interventions are often rated (e.g., effective, promising, inconclusive, not effective).
  • Summaries: They provide clear descriptions of the program, target population, outcomes, and implementation details.
  • Accessibility: Many are publicly available online, created by government agencies or research institutions.

Established Interventions

NCTSN Trauma Treatments & Interventions

Provides fact sheets about specific types of interventions.

SAMHSA Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center

Information and tools to incorporate evidence-based practices into their communities or clinical settings.

SPRC - Suicide Prevention in Pennsylvania

Examples of programs and populations they serve within Pennsylvania. You can also look at other states to get ideas. 

Contracted Providers Serving Dauphin County & City of Harrisburg

While this is specific to Dauphin County, you can find more by searching for human services provider for ____ county

What Works Clearinghouse

While aimed toward educators, the Social Emotional Learning and Behavior topic can be useful for modeling interventions for this assignment.

Results First Clearinghouse

Searchable databases of established and new interventions for social services with effectiveness ratings.

California Evidence Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare

Organized by topic, this site lists programs and includes ratings based on the scientific evidence supporting the program.

Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse

Identify, explore and compare the effectiveness of interventions pertaining to employment.

Crime Solutions

CrimeSolutions.gov is a resource from the National Institute of Justice that evaluates and rates the effectiveness of criminal justice programs and practices based on scientific evidence.

Social Programs that Work

Identifies social programs which have been rigorously evaluated and shown to produce significant benefits.

Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse

Reviews and provides information on programs and services related to mental health, substance use, and in-home parenting skills to help prevent child abuse and neglect.

Youth.gov

U.S. government website that provides information and resources to help people create, maintain, and strengthen effective youth programs.