Creating a National Vision and Building Capacity for the Role of Social Work in Primary Care

With funding from Team Primary Care, Professors Rachelle Ashcroft and Keith Adamson are leading a project that aims to strengthen the integration of social workers in primary care across Canada.

Social work has a philosophy and expertise that aligns with the aims of primary care. Social workers in primary care contribute to patient care by providing psychosocial assessment and intervention, offering psychotherapy and other counseling, doing case management, navigating complex health care systems, linking patients with community resources and other parts of the health care system, and educating and training other providers about the psychosocial aspects related to health and illness. There are variations, however, in the roles and the extent to which social workers have been integrated in primary care teams across Canada. This project will provide clarity to social workers on their roles and optimize their scopes of practice in patient care. It is important to establish a national vision and to further build the capacity of social workers in primary care. 

Working in partnership with the Canadian Association of Social Work, the aims of this project are to:

• Develop the Canadian Association of Social Work’s National position and vision statements for the future of social work in primary care
• Create new publicly available curriculum about the role of social work in primary care

Project Team Members 

Rachelle Ashcroft, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto	Keith Adamson, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto
Fred Phelps, Canadian Association of Social Workers	Glenda Webber, Canadian Association of Social Workers
Louis-Francois Dallaire, Centre Intégré Universitaire de Santé et de Services Sociaux (CIUSSS)	Deep Sur, Ontario Association of Social Workers
Connor Kemp, Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario	Jennifer Rayner, Alliance for Healthier Communities

For more information about the project, please contact the Project Coordinator Nelson Pang.