1 SW 628 – Interpersonal Practice with Adult Individuals Spring/Summer 2006 Section 001: Mondays, 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.; May 8 – July 24 Instructor: Gail Halem Quenneville, M.S.W. Office Phone: 734-996-9077 Cell: 734-355-6585 E-mail address: [email protected] OR [email protected] Office hours 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 521/540 (i.e. Interpersonal Practice) and equivalent courses. 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 diversity (i.e. race, gender, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation of the client), time-limited treatment methods, and practice with involuntary clients. Course Content This course will present various 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 responsive to the impact of social environments, and supported by empirically based efficacy studies. Treatment models that focus on specific psychosocial problems associated with work, relationships, mood, anxiety, and impulse problems will be discussed. Various treatment models will be presented such as psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and client-centered. These intervention models will also be evaluated for how well they fit the special needs of diverse populations (e.g. people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered clients, and the poor) and meta-theories from empowerment, feminist and socialist perspectives will be applied.2 Each model 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 Practice Area evaluation courses, students will learn how to integrate evaluation techniques and measures into their on-going interventions with individual adults so that they 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 situations, since other courses will focus more specifically on special populations and problems. Course content will include ethical issues that related to interpersonal practice with individual adults and with those elements of the NASW Code of Ethics that especially impact on practice with individual adults. 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. 2) Assess the effectiveness of various kinds of intervention models and procedures that may be utilized with individual adults 3) Operationalize the various intervention phases of prevention and treatment models that effectively impact the psycho-social problems of individual adults. 4) Identify common factors that determine client motivation in adults and how to apply specific interventions to enhance “readiness” for client change. 5) Modify intervention models to take into account race, gender, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, and special abilities of adult clients. 6) Operationalize the NASW Code of Ethics as it applies to value dilemmas in interpersonal practice with adults. Relationship of the Course to Four Curricular Themes Multiculturalism and Diversity will be addressed through careful analysis of how clinical models can be applied and modified to fit the special needs of various groups. Resistance and motivation of adults to interventions will be covered to demonstrate how effective intervention models must be adapted to fit the needs of various ethnic and racial groups. This course will emphasis that mono-cultural clinical models must be adapted to fit the definitions of “problem” and “treatment” that exist in diverse groups in order for social workers to practice with adults from diverse backgrounds.3 Social Justice and Social Change will be addressed by recognizing that, historically, clinical services have excluded poor and oppressed clients from “talking therapies.” Often these clients were given the harshest and most restrictive treatments (e.g. shock, sterilization, medications, and lobotomies), whereas more privileged clients were granted more benign interventions (e.g. outpatient family therapy). This course will examine those differences as well as how socioeconomic exclusion arises in screening criteria that exclude clients because of intelligence, verbal ability, insight, and motivation. Promotion, Prevention, Treatment, and Rehabilitation will be addressed through a focus on intervention models and intervention procedures that can be used to prevent and treat psychosocial problems of adults. Behavioral and Social Science Research will be addressed through careful selection of intervention models for which there is empirical evidence on efficacy. Students will learn that although many time-limited models of practice with adults have proliferated over the past two decades, not all of them have generated research that demonstrates their efficacy. Relationship of the Course to Social Work Ethics and Values In working with adults, social workers must encourage self-determination and empower adult clients to choose and pursue their own change goals. Ethical