PROGRAM OBJECTIVES

PROGRAM MEASURES

Goal 2

C offers a generalist foundation for understanding persons and social contexts

C conveys skill competencies for social work

C focuses on empowerment, social justice and practice with disenfranchised populations.

C infuses content on the values of social work profession and human diversity

C integrates practice, policy, and research throughout the curriculum.

 

 

C Professional Values and Ethics: Foundation: Delineate the profession’s standards, values, and ethics. Demonstrate personal values and behaviors congruent with the ethics and values of the social work profession. Concentration: Use self-evaluation, supervision, and feedback from others to stimulate personal and professional development. Reconcile ethical issues and concerns. Practice within an ethical framework.

C Human Diversity: Foundation: Describe the differences and similarities in the experiences, beliefs and needs of people of different races, national origin, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, culture, class, religion, physical or mental ability, and age. Recognize the need for worldwide professional cooperation. Concentration: Demonstrate differential assessment and intervention skills that are context-sensitive. Include positive factors related to social and cultural diversity in assessment and intervention.

C Social and Economic Justice: Foundation: Understand the causes and effects of social injustice and discrimination. Utilize skills necessary for advocacy related to prevention and amelioration of institutional oppression, social inequities, and economic injustice. Concentration: Advocate for clients. Work to humanize provision of social services. Engage in systematic social change to alleviate economic deprivation and oppression. Apply change strategies to achieve a just society in a global community.

C Populations-at-risk: Foundation: Understand the patterns, dynamics and consequences of discrimination, economic deprivation and oppression. Practice effectively and with sensitivity with various population groups, including (but not limited to) people of color, women, gays and lesbians, and those at-risk populations distinguished by age, ethnicity, culture, class, religion, and physical or mental ability. Concentration: Utilize skills to identify and change power imbalances and inequity. Utilize skills required to prevent and ameliorate social conditions related to power imbalances.

C Persons and Social Contexts: Foundation: Comprehensively analyze social work clients as human systems in an environmental context by examining ecosystem structure and interaction, bio-psycho-social functioning, and cultural influences. Demonstrate understanding of the impact of social and economic forces on individual and social systems. Concentration: Respond appropriately to the unique characteristics and resource needs of diverse client systems, including individuals, families, groups, organizations, neighborhoods, communities and society. Apply critical thinking skills to evaluate a range of theories in terms of their underlying assumptions and their utility in advanced social work practice.

C Social Policy Practice: Foundation: Analyze the community and society as the larger systems in which social needs develop and social resources are produced and allocated. Demonstrate knowledge of the history of social welfare and the purpose of the social welfare profession in relationship to welfare policies. Analyze current social policy within the historical contexts and contemporary factors that shape policy in the United States and the world community. Concentration: Engage in opportunities for initiating and supporting social change through social policy formulation. Apply the advocacy and political skills necessary to analyze, develop, and influence policy.

C Empowerment Practice: Foundation: Engage in social work empowerment practice with individuals, families, and groups in the context of organizations and communities. Apply empowering social work processes to all levels of client systems by building collaborative relationships, assessing available resources, developing plans, implementing differential intervention strategies, and evaluating outcomes. Focus on the assessment of client strengths and problems in the interaction of client systems and their social environment. Concentration: Use of critical thinking in assessing information and intervention strategies when applying appropriate research based knowledge and technological skills. Utilize skills to alleviate personal, developmental, or relationship distress, and effect social change in larger systems.

C Social Work Practice Research: Foundation: Utilize research as an essential process for contributing to social work theory and practice as an advanced practice social worker. Observe ethical standards when using research and evaluation in social work practice. Concentration: Apply research findings to evaluate practice outcomes and implement research methodology in self and program outcome evaluations. Use and participate in research that contributes to knowledge. Evaluate one’s own practice.

· Focus on context

Demonstrate awareness of the social, political, historical, and cultural underpinnings of one’s own experience and the experience of client systems.

Incorporate understanding of the effects of interpersonal, social, and institutional oppression and discrimination in assessing situations and planning change in various service delivery structures and fields of practice.

Assess situations considering individual, familial, community, socioeconomic, service delivery, and political contexts and construct empowering interventions that address contextual elements in each situation.

· Collaborate in practice

Treat diverse clients distinguished by race, gender, age, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, class, religion, physical capability, and cognitive ability with respect and consideration of inherent human dignity and worth.

Establish goals, priorities, and strategies in partnership with clients, constituencies, and other stakeholders for individual and political change.

Contribute as a collaborative, supportive, and flexible member of an organizational team in operationalizing agency mission and function.

· Emphasize strengths and opportunities

Assess client situations in ways that emphasize individual competencies, environmental resources, and realistic opportunities.

Apply empowering practice processes directed toward heightening personal efficacy, interpersonal competence, and political consciousness of client systems.

Demonstrate differential assessment and intervention skills that are context-sensitive and consider positive factors related to social and cultural diversity.

· Integrate/synchronize practice activities

Apply practice perspectives that incorporate principles of the ecosystems view, feminisms, social constructionism, and critical theory.

Assess the reciprocal influence of persons and environments in the need for multi-level system change efforts.

Work with clients to take coordinated actions at multiple systems levels to effect positive and sustainable change.

· Take a political approach

Contribute professionally in meaningful ways to construct a socially and economically just society.

Collaborate with clients to influence policy and legislative initiatives that have potential benefits or consequences for client systems, professionals, and field of practice.

Assess practice activities and client situations in terms of political, social policy, and legislative perspectives and take actions to ameliorate social and political injustice.

· Maintain a reflective practice stance

Apply professional social work ethics and values consistently in practice; confront and reconcile personal values with those expected of an empowerment-oriented social work professional.

Apply research-based knowledge and research skills to develop and evaluate one’s own practice, client outcomes, and program effectiveness including both quantitative and qualitative skills in empowerment evaluation, action research, and anti-oppressive research.

Maintain a praxis process that involves critical reflection, action, and reflection of effects of action to create a feedback loop for personal change and political action.

Goal 3

Develop University-Agency partnership with the social service delivery system.

Goal 4

Goal 5

Contribute to the student-centered focus of the mission of the university: "To enable all its students to develop intellectually, spiritually, ethically, socially, artistically, and physically in order to enrich their own lives and the lives of others."

Exit interviews – focus groups