ABSTRACT
Human-service professionals, such as social workers, appropriately emphasize a service role as their major function. It is their task to provide assistance to persons in need and crisis, to enhance their coping capacities, to link community resources with people who require these, and to reduce social problems as much as possible. In short, it is their mandate to negotiate and ameliorate stress and tensions between and among individuals, families, group members and groups, neighborhoods, organizations and communities, and their respective environments, as they occur throughout the life span. Working with older persons on any of these levels and using their requisite skills and techniques, service professionals, paraprofessionals, volunteers, and constituents are involved not only in a service enterprise, but also in an educational enterprise, whether they are aware of it or not.
