Clinical Methods I prepares social work clinicians to execute the essential clinical tasks of engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation competently and effectively in practice with individuals. Students learn fundamental psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and post-modern approaches to each of these clinical tasks. Throughout the course, a multicultural lens is applied to identify implicit biases or inherent theoretical assumptions that might impact the responsiveness and effectiveness of each approach across a broad cultural spectrum. Through the use of self-reflection, a strengths-based perspective, and social work professional values, students learn to select and apply clinical approaches that best match each client’s needs and context.
Upon completion of this course, students are expected to be able to do the following:
- Compare and contrast the strengths and limitations of theoretical frameworks and practice methods in terms of their responsiveness to each individual client’s cultural context and values. (C2b; C4c)
- Deepen understanding of effective, culturally-responsive, and theory-informed relational skills to engage individual clients in the co-creation of a therapeutic change alliance. (C1e; C6a, C6b, C6c)
- Using the three central theoretical frameworks presented, create strengths-based and client-empowering clinical assessments and diagnostic formulations of behavior, concerns, and mental illness within individual clients. (C7a, C7b, C7c)
- Identify basic intervention techniques for therapeutic work with individual clients within psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and postmodern theories that are relevant to a range of presenting clinical concerns. (C7e; C8a; C9c)
Prerequisite: Advanced Standing or MSW 647 Generalist Field Experience II with Seminar