Assessment, Documentation, and Effective Interviewing Skills in Social Work

Catalog description

This course will provide students with an overview of the necessary skills, strategies, techniques, theories, and values associated with social work interviewing and case management. Students will learn how to monitor, plan, and seek services for clients at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. Other topics explored will include clinical interviewing, conducting assessments, and initiating the referral process. Clinical interviewing is an important skill for all social workers to achieve due to its nature of fostering effective communication patterns between the client and practitioner. Students will master how to apply social work interviewing skills to practice through engaging in a variety of techniques: Basic listening, clarifying, confronting, feedback, focusing, supporting, reflecting, reframing, redirecting, validating, among others. According to the National Association of Social Workers, case management dates its development back to the emergence of the social work profession and it still remains integral to contemporary social work practice. The National Association of Social Workers' benchmark study of licensed social workers in the United States documented that case management is a component of many social work positions, and that a significant number of social workers report spending more than half their time on case management-related responsibilities. Social workers must be competently skilled in interviewing and generalist case management techniques to effectively meet the needs of their client populations.