In the Specialization Year, the MSW Program prepares Ñý¼§Ö±²¥ for advanced integrated practice. MSW Ñý¼§Ö±²¥ develop competence through course-based learning and field education as they learn and demonstrate the following professional behaviors.
Competency 1: Demonstrate Ethical and Professional Behavior
Specialized Behaviors - Social Workers:
a. Demonstrate professionalism in interprofessional, agency, and community practice contexts.
b. Utilize critical and anti-racist principles in assessing and evaluating complex ethical situations and decisions.
c. Utilize supervision and peer consultation to ensure ethical social work practice with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
d. Utilize collaborative approaches to complex ethical decision-making that follow standards of the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics, additional codes as appropriate, and relevant laws and regulations, and ensure the participation or representation of those most directly affected.
Competency 2: Advance Human Rights and Social, Racial, Economic, and Environmental Justice
Specialized Behaviors - Social Workers:
a. Utilize anti-racist, anti-colonial strategies to challenge racism and other forms of oppression that compromise human rights or create impediments to socially just policies, programs, and practices.
b. Advocate for trauma-informed systems of care, expanded access to effective trauma-focused interventions, and social justice for marginalized and oppressed people who are most at risk for experiencing trauma, including historical, racial, and secondary trauma.
c. Engage in justice-oriented practice that integrates critical understanding of specific environmental, social, and economic justice issues affecting rural and Indigenous communities and the greater geographic region
Competency 3: Engage Anti-racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ADEI) in Practice
Specialized Behaviors - Social Workers:
a. Design research and practice interventions that are anti-racist, empowering, collaborative, inclusive, equitable, and responsive to organizational and community contexts.
b. Engage in practice with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities that demonstrate cultural humility and critical understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing rural and Indigenous communities and the greater geographic region.
Competency 4: Engage in Practice-Informed Research and Research-Informed Practice
Specialized Behaviors - Social Workers:
a. Apply research-informed knowledge of trauma, including historical trauma, and trauma-informed systems to designing, delivering, and evaluating effective interventions at multiple levels of practice.
b. Apply multiple ways of knowing and skills of program evaluation (including Indigenous evaluation frameworks and decolonizing methodologies), critical participatory action research, and advocacy to address identified concerns of rural and Indigenous communities and the greater geographic region
Competency 5: Engage in Policy Practice
Specialized Behaviors - Social Workers:
a. Demonstrate knowledge of the historic and contemporary significance of the Indian Child Welfare Act in decolonizing or Indigenizing practices with families, communities, and nations.
b. Apply frameworks for critical policy analysis that integrate a historical understanding of social policy and a commitment to social justice, intersectionality, anti-racism, and anti-colonialism p>
c. Use social justice, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive lenses to assess how social welfare policies affect the delivery of and access to social services in rural and indigenous communities.
d. Advocate for policies that inform and support trauma-informed systems of care.
Competency 6: Engage with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations and Communities
Specialized Behaviors - Social Workers:
a. Apply critical understanding of positionality, intersectionality, cultural humility, and anti-racist principles to inform the engagement process.
b. Effectively address and navigate issues of difference, power, and resistance that arise in the engagement process with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
c. Implement culturally grounded and trauma-informed principles of engagement with clients and client systems that reflect understanding of and sensitivity to multiple forms of trauma, including historical, intergenerational, racial, and secondary trauma.
Competency 7: Assess Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations and Communities
Specialized Behaviors - Social Workers:
a. Apply critical understanding of positionality, intersectionality, cultural humility, and anti-racist principles to inform the assessment process.
b. Utilize collaborative processes of assessment that honor the knowledge, expertise, and experience of the participants and involve them as partners in the change process.
c. Apply knowledge of trauma and trauma-informed organizations to assess and improve organizational practice.
Competency 8: Intervene with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations and Communities
Specialized Behaviors - Social Workers:
a. Apply critical understanding of positionality, intersectionality, cultural humility, and anti-racist principles to inform the intervention process.
b. Demonstrate understanding of intervention as a collaborative process of action and accompaniment with, and on behalf of, diverse individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities that honors their knowledge, experience, and expertise.
c. Advocate for the advancement of trauma-informed systems of care, expanded access to effective trauma focused interventions, and social justice for marginalized and oppressed people who are most at risk for experiencing trauma, including historical, racial, and secondary trauma.
Competency 9: Evaluate Practice with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations and Communities
Specialized Behaviors - Social Workers:
a. Apply critical understanding of positionality, intersectionality, cultural humility, and anti-racist principles to inform the evaluation process.
b. Design and carry out collaborative and empowering evaluation processes responsive to organizational and community contexts where those most affected are meaningful stakeholders in the decision-making and change efforts.
Competency 10: Apply Forms of Leadership to Support Collaborative, Interdisciplinary, or Transdisciplinary Relationships and Active Community Participation in Addressing the Intersection of Local and Global Issues Impacting your Community and Greater Geographic Region
Specialized Behaviors - Social Workers:
a. Apply understanding of the relationships among local, state, federal, and Indigenous governments to inform effective advocacy for the rights and wellbeing of residents of one’s community.
b. Utilize inclusive, collaborative approaches to leadership to bring diverse community and organizational stakeholders into processes of organizational change.
c. Facilitate and/or engage in critical dialogue around diversity, equity and inclusion.
d. Apply knowledge of trauma and trauma-informed organizations to assess and improve organizational practice.