Utilizing a Required Documentation Course to Improve the Recording Skills of Undergraduate Social Work Students

ABSTRACT

Baccalaureate social workers respond to documentation and record-keeping demands of regulatory organizations that oversee or fund social service agencies. Learning to accurately document client needs, progress, and service delivery outcomes is important in ensuring that clients are receiving effective services. Despite the importance of documentation skills, many undergraduate social work programs do not provide sufficient curriculum content on client record keeping. The authors report the results of a study that examined changes in baccalaureate social work students’ perceptions of their documentation skills after completing a required documentation course. The sample size included 101 students at pretest and 97 students completing the post-test. Statistically significant findings show students perceived an increase in knowledge in three areas of documentation: 1) formats, 2) content, and 3) writing skills. The authors discuss implications for social work education and practice.     

Geriatric Enrichment in Social Work Education: Lessons Learned from the GeroRich Projects

The Geriatric Enrichment in Social Work Education (GeroRich) initiative was a critical step in addressing the national shortage of social workers interested in gerontological practice. Sixty-seven social work programs participated in the 3-year GeroRich project designed to infuse gerontological content into the BSW and MSW curriculum. This study analyzed the lessons learned by participating institutions about the curriculum enrichment effort. Five themes emerged from the qualitative analysis of GeroRich final reports: (a) obtaining faculty buy-in and faculty development, (b) increasing student interest and engagement, (c) developing community partners, (d) developing interdisciplinary linkages, and (e) facilitating institutional commitment and sustainability. The findings from this study provide valuable information on the implementation of curricular enrichment efforts in gerontology that can benefit social work and other health care disciplines.     

The Faculty Meeting: Practicing Social Justice-Oriented Group Work

Social group work scholars and practitioners have begun to locate and recognize important sites for thinking about and practicing social group work as increasing evidence demonstrates its diminishing importance. This article identifies faculty meetings as a significant site for integrating social group work more fully into departments and schools of social work and helping to achieve the profession's social justice mission. Challenging the meaning of the faculty meeting and thinking of it as a faculty group is a necessary prerequisite to realize this goal. A set of principles is presented and next steps explored to reclaim and reinsert the value of social group work for the profession today.     

Demographics and Reality

Abstract

Social work education has neglected gerontology at the same time that the demand for aging-competent practitioners has increased. Surveys, focus groups, and other sources of data from the John A. Hartford Foundation SAGE-SW project at the Council on Social Work Education indicate a lack of current curriculum content, little encouragement for students, limited gerontological expertise among faculty, and more interest by students in gaining gerontological knowledge than expected. Suggested actions for practitioners and field agency supervisors are provided.     

Smith College School for Social Work and Combat‐Related Trauma: Allegiance,Scholarship, and Commitment

The Smith College School for Social Work (SCSSW) was founded for the purpose of treating soldiers returning from World War I who suffered from shell shock, conditions that are now described as combat‐related trauma. As history evolved, America found itself embroiled in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and contemporary conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. With each conflict clinical social workers have played a pivotal role in the care of active‐duty soldiers and returning veterans. This article explores the School's historical contribution to the treatment of combat‐related trauma through its curriculum, theoretical perspectives, and endorsement of different treatment paradigms over the last century. The earlier decades and Vietnam–era time involvement of the SCSSW in clinical social work practice with service members and their families is of particular interest. Specific recommendations are offered to the School that may benefit those practitioners entering the field of combat‐related trauma.     

Developing social work students' communication skills with children and young people: a model for the qualifying level curriculum

Currently, there is no explicit requirement for qualifying level social workers to be skilled in communicating with children. In a recent Knowledge Review, we argued that practitioners should have a basic level of competence in such skill at the point of qualification. If that argument is accepted then how this should be acquired within the qualifying social work curriculum needs consideration. The authors present a framework for understanding those components of skilled communication with children that should be included in the qualifying curriculum. A whole programme approach to curriculum development will be outlined which, we suggest, might enable students to develop the knowledge, capabilities and values required for skilled practice in this area.     

Public perceptions of social workers and social work in the Republic of Croatia

Throughout the war and the post-war period, the field of social work in Croatia has developed at an accelerated rate. The involvement and assistance from international agencies and individuals created numerous fora for exchange, collaboration and mutual learning among all the helping professions. The research process represented a collaborative effort of faculty, lecturers and students in the Study Center for Social Work in the University of Zagreb's Faculty of Law. The sample was convenient, composed mainly of the urban population of Croatia. The instrument consists of two main parts, one regarding the content of a social worker's work, and the other regarding the attitudes toward that profession. We believe that the results of our study demonstrate that social work, as a profession, is relatively well known among the citizens of Croatia. Those markers pertaining to the attitude towards social work profession, which are negative in nature, are ranked by our participants as lowest in importance on the scale.     

Social Work Education in Mainland China: Development and Issues

The present paper gives an overview of the current trend of social work education in Mainland China, a fast-expanding academic subject of higher education in Mainland China during the last 20 years. This rapid development was brought about by the increasing recognition of the use of social work knowledge in tackling some of the social problems arising from the social and economic changes induced by the open door policy of China. New initiatives were undertaken by government departments, academic institutes and service providers, to explore possible reform of service delivery models in serving the elderly, children and youth, women and other vulnerable groups. It thus creates demands for personnel with new skills and knowledge. It has also led to the promulgation of government policies in 2006, in establishing a strong work force of social work, by setting up an accreditation system for social work as a vocation, making available funding for service development and setting up of NGOs. This paper also highlights some of the imminent issues that cause concern, such as the search for a theoretical model of social training and practices suitable for Chinese society, standardization of curriculum design, teaching and learning, consolidation of accreditation examination and career structure, and creation of a working environment conducive to the professionalization of social work in terms of motivating and retaining social work graduates to stay in the service sector.     

Teaching and learning communication with children and young people: developing the qualifying social work curriculum in a changing policy context

Twenty years after survey evidence showed that UK social work students could complete their training without having learnt about or worked with children, new research suggests little has changed. There is still no guarantee that any student on qualification will have been taught about or assessed in communication skills with children and young people. This is despite the claim that the pre‐registration award provides teaching and assessment in core generic skills as a foundation for the development of specialist practice roles in agencies. In fact, as this paper shows, a common understanding of what counts as effective communication with children has yet to be consolidated in social work practice and research. This has impeded the process of curriculum development. Divergent expectations about what counts as social work communication with children in a changing policy context may be exacerbating long‐standing uncertainties about how genericism and specialism should be linked in professional education and training. In exploring these issues, this paper seeks to clear the way for the renewed effort that is now required if this aspect of curriculum development is to be effective.     

The Essential Power of Group Work

SUMMARY

For almost two decades, leaders in the field of social group work have been warning that the foundational principles and practice of group work as a modality are in danger of being absorbed into generalist social work practice. This paper expands upon the appeal of leaders in the social group work field to generate an environment in which group work is recognized as an integral method in social work practice and education. This paper examines group work as a powerful methodology in social work practice with a specific theoretical framework and skill base that is fundamental to the social work profession. The characteristics of group work's strengths are explored with a comprehensive overview that inspires renewed commitment to preserving, practicing and promoting social group work as a viable and integral part of social work practice.     

BOOK REVIEWS

In a school where social group work had been es- tablished for many years and where the graduate social work cur- riculum was organized around method sequences-the faculty voted to reorganize the curriculum, moving to a generic model. The authors began a longitudinal study of the consequences of such a change. This report of first phase findings describes the considerable differences in knowledge, skill and interest in group work found between students specializing in group work and other sequences. The findings were that curriculum makes a dif- ference-a sequence of group work courses and field experi- ences did have differential impact on student learning.     

A review of the research priorities of practitioners working with children in social care

It has been argued both that research in social care is insufficiently relevant to practice, and that a clearer steer is needed from the social work community in shaping national research priorities. The work reported here systematically searched for and analysed findings from studies that asked practitioners working with children for their suggestions for research. Eight studies were found, and authors gave us access to the primary data from four of these, to which we added responses from the What Works for Children? website survey of practitioners’ research priorities. Responses were analysed in terms of both topic and type of research. Family support, parenting and child protection research were among the most frequently requested child‐focused topics. In terms of question type, almost half the research suggestions concerned the effectiveness of interventions. These findings suggest that a commitment to outcomes, and to robustly researched interventions to attain those outcomes, are increasingly important to practitioners. These views from the front line may well be useful in assisting decision‐makers in social work, and research funders, to set priorities.     

Integrating the teaching,learning and assessment of communication with children within the qualifying social work curriculum

Qualifying social work education must provide students with a variety of experiential, personalized, participatory, didactic and critically reflective learning opportunities across both the taught curriculum and in practice placements if deep learning of the capabilities needed for effective communication with children and young people is to be ensured. At present, programmes in England are not consistent in the curriculum structures, content and pedagogical approaches they are employing to teach and assess this topic. This paper discusses first how current proposals for the reform of qualifying education in England do not address the ambiguities and discretion in regulatory guidance, which have meant that the place and relevance of this topic within the curriculum remain uncertain and contested. It then draws on a model of the sequencing of students' learning and development in qualifying training, developed through the author's recent empirical research, to present an integrated and coherent approach to the teaching, learning and assessment of this topic. It is proposed that this strategy will enable students to develop the generic, ‘child‐focused’ and ‘applied child‐specialist’ capabilities they need for the ‘knowing’, ‘being’ and ‘doing’ of effective communication with children.     

A National Survey of Aging Curriculum in Schools of Social Work

The present studv reports the results of a nationwide survey which examined the current status of gerontological education in B.S.W. and M.S.W. proprams. The survey findings register a decline in gerontological curricula but an increase in student intrest in aging. The survey also notes that lack of trained faculty and a full curriculum are most often mentioned as major barriers to further gerontological curricula development. The paper considers implications of these findings along with recommendations for expanding aging content at both the undergraduate and graduate level of social work education.     

A plan for helping to identify men psychologically unadapted to military service 1

Social workers increasingly practice in medical settings; however, there are few applications of clinical practice theories at their disposal. Using fictional composite cases based on the writers’ experiences in medical social work, the authors illustrate how clinical practice theories can be used in the assessment and treatment of Veterans. These cases illustrate real world applications of clinical practice theories for what is often seen as task-oriented work. The authors place case management or casework in medical settings within the confines of clinical social work and suggest clinical practice theories have important applications to these efforts.     

The Productive Aging Concept and Social Work Students’ Perceptions Toward an Older Population

Social work curriculum that offers an optimistic perspective on aging has the potential to help social work students go on to practice in a nondiscriminatory way with older adults. This study introduces social work students to the productive aging concept, an optimistic view to social potential in later life, in lecture format and assesses postlecture changes in their perceptions of older adults. Seventy-two students (16 BSW; 56 MSW) were recruited from a large university in the southeast United States to participate in a lecture on productive aging. A one-group pretest–posttest design was used, and a paired samples t test (n = 72) was used to analyze changes in social work students’ perceptions toward older adults. Negative attitudes toward older adults decreased and positive attitudes toward older adults increased among students following their participation in the lecture on productive aging. This finding suggests the productive aging concept may favorably influence student perceptions of older adults. Future research should aim to investigate ways in which these changes in perception at the college level can translate and self-sustain in social work practice for social work students postgraduation.     

浅析高校社会工作实验室利用问题

我国高等院校社会工作专业实验室建设的步伐在日益加快,社会工作专业的教师和学生对实验室在教学过程中扮演的重要角色认识的也愈来愈清楚。由于目前实验室的利用仍然处在一个摸索前进的阶段,仍然普遍存在着一些亟待解决的问题.如何充分发挥社会工作实验室的作用,科学合理利用实验室的资源业已成为每一个社会工作专业工作者关心的主要问题。本文针对目前国内高校中社会工作实验室的现状,结合作者本身工作经验,提出了一些改进措施。