1 SW 628 (Sections 001 and 003) Interpersonal Practice with Adult Individuals Winter 2012 Alison Adlaf, LMSW Office: SSW 2766 Phone: 734.834.1055 Email: [email protected] OR [email protected] Office Hours: 5-6pm Wednesdays, and by appointment Course Description This course will approach work with individual clients from a person-in-environment perspective and build on the content presented in course SW521, the foundation course on interpersonal practice. The stages of the treatment process (i.e. engagement, assessment, planning, evaluation, intervention, and termination) will be presented for work with individual adults. The relevance and limitations of various theoretical approaches will be reviewed as they apply to assessment, planning, and intervention methods. This course will focus on empirically evaluated models of intervention and will teach students how to monitor and evaluate their own practice. Special attention will be given to issues of the key diversity dimensions such as ability, age, class, color, culture, ethnicity, family structure, gender (including gender identity and gender expression), marital status, national origin, race, religion or spirituality, sex, and sexual orientation. The course will include identification of one’s own social and cultural identities and group memberships and how these relate to working with clients, colleagues, and other professionals. The course will emphasize time-limited treatment methods and practice with involuntary clients. Course Content This course will present several models of intervention designed to prevent and treat psychosocial problems of individual adults. Emphasis will be placed on approaches that enhance social functioning, strengthen problem solving capacities, and support the coping capacities of individual adults. The various models will be time-limited, responsive to the impact of social environments, and supported by empirically based studies. Treatment models that focus on specific psychosocial problems associated with work, relationships, mood, anxiety, and impulse problems will be discussed. Several treatment models will be presented, including Brief Psychodynamic Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Interpersonal Therapy, Cognitive and Dialectical Behavioral Interventions. These intervention models will also be evaluated for how well they fit the special needs of diverse populations. Each model that is presented will cover all phases of the intervention process: engagement and screening, assessment, planning, evaluation, implementation, and termination. Although evaluation will be discussed in much greater depth in the evaluation course, students will learn how to integrate evaluation techniques and measures into their on-going interventions with individual adults so that they2 can employ systematic measures of their effectiveness in the field. This course will carefully explore the issues that influence and determine client motivation because many individual adults come into the treatment process with varying degrees of willingness and sometimes are coerced to seek help by authorities or family members. Strategies that workers can employ to engage reluctant or resistant clients will be presented. Intervention models in this course will be general enough to apply to a wide range of adult clients in a wide range of adult situations, since other courses will focus more specifically on special populations and problems. Course content will include ethical issues that relate to interpersonal practice with individual adults and those elements of the NASW code of ethics that especially impact on practice with individual adults (e.g., boundary and comportment issues between worker and client). Course Objectives Upon completion of the course, students will be able to: 1) Describe how theory informs and shapes the kinds of intervention strategies that may be employed when working with individual adults, including the indications and contraindications of various IP models. 2) Assess the effectiveness of various kinds of intervention models and procedures that may be utilized with individual adults. 3) Demonstrate advanced social work skills with individual adults in the pre-engagement, engagement, assessment, intervention, ending and evaluation phases of interpersonal social work practice. Critically apply in a practice setting a minimum of two empirically supported IP theories. 4) Conduct an assessment of coping resources and strengths; biophysical, emotional, behavioral and cognitive functioning; intra-personal and environmental systems. Assess life-threatening problems, such as addictions and violence; and forms of oppression clients’ experience. Identify and assess the effects of diversity dimensions (including ability, age, class, color, culture, ethnicity, family structure, gender (including gender identity and gender expression), marital status, national origin, race, religion or spirituality, sex, and sexual orientation). 5) Demonstrate their ability to form worker-client alliances and collaborations, communicate empathically, and help enhance motivation for change, cultivate hope, and address ambivalence and internal and external barriers to change. 6) Identify ways to match or modify intervention methods effectively with [adult] client problems, across diverse populations, cultural backgrounds, sociopolitical contexts and available resources. 7) Identify one’s own social and cultural identities and group memberships, and how these relate to working with clients, colleagues, and other professionals 8) Evaluate the efficacy of interventions used with adult clients including the use of specific evaluation measures. 9) Apply and articulate social work values, ethical standards, and principles unique to interpersonal practice interventions with adults involving diverse populations and settings.3 Course Design This course will employ a number of pedagogical strategies to promote skill development such as: lecture, discussion, case presentations, gamed simulations, case analysis, interactive media simulations, exercises in vivo, practice within the classroom through role playing, didactic presentation of theory/models/procedures, modeling with demonstration on video, etc. The instructor also welcomes any innovative ideas from students as to other modalities. Please know that this course syllabus represents a guide for the course and does not preclude changes