Prerequisite: SWK 4608H Social Work Practice with Families or an equivalent introductory family therapy course or consent of instructor.
This course differs from (Family Practice Across the Life Cycle) in its focus and depth specific to children and adolescents, their parents and families.
This practice course builds on SWK 4608H and is designed to deepen and expand at an advanced level clinical knowledge and competence in work with families of children and adolescents in multiple contexts across service systems.
The course will be highly interactive and seminar style with the focus on applied learning in preparing evidence informed contextually and culturally responsive family assessment and treatment plans and enhancing clinical skills and self efficacy. We will examine therapeutic processes and specific strategies for optimizing change both within and across different ecological parenting and family therapy models (e.g., functional family therapy, multisystemic therapy, attachment based family therapy, multidimensional therapy, brief strategic therapy, collaborative cognitive behavioral models, psychoeducation and integrative narrative models).
The course will provide an opportunity to apply systemic thinking to diverse problems and populations of at-risk youth and families and allow students to explore a range of effective family centered intervention or prevention models for diverse issues (e.g., adolescent depression, child or youth anxiety, externalizing disorders, child and/or parent trauma, parent depression). Students will strengthen their ability to use evidence in clinical decision-making in nuanced ways in real world complex cases and be supported to integrate class learning with social work values, knowledge and skills into a framework for one’s own professional model of practice.