One-week summer intensive June 5-9, 2023
This course is designed to familiarize students with the core concepts and skills necessary for social work practice with families. An integrated family systems and ecological developmental model provides the guiding framework for viewing children and adolescents within the context of their families and extra-familial relationships that affect their development and functioning. The primary focus will be on the development of evidence informed clinical case conceptualization and practice skills in engagement, assessment, and intervention with families. See the semester long syllabus available in the FIFSW general office for a fuller course description.
The course will be adapted for the one week format but will essentially be equivalent to the semester long course and consist of lectures, family therapy videos, role plays, group work and discussion. Students will form Family Groups and work as a collaborative team throughout the course for the purpose of applying course content to a family, role playing and assignments that build on Family Group learning. In some ways, the daily class format will be similar to a workshop. The ongoing Family Group will offer an opportunity to practice new learning skills in a supportive collaborative environment and takes on special importance in the one week format because students will not be in practicum with the opportunity to apply learning to ongoing cases.
The syllabus and course readings will be available on Blackboard in June and will need to be read ahead of time. The readings are clinically rich and key for contributing to and benefitting from class activities. To facilitate both moving into Family Groups and reflecting on readings, class participants should be prepared to introduce themselves, their interests, and “gems” of learning or questions from the readings on Day 1. You should expect to put in some evening time during the week to review readings as needed and to work on two short assignments. The final written product will build on and extend previous Family Group work and be due two weeks after course completion.