At the completion of the program, students in the BSW program should be able to demonstrate the following competencies and foundational and advanced level practice behaviors.

 

1.     Competency:  Identify as a professional social worker and conduct oneself accordingly. This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to advocate for client access to the services of social work
• Ability to practice personal reflection and self-correction to assure continual professional development
• Ability to attend to professional roles and boundaries
• Ability to demonstrate professional demeanor in behavior, appearance, and communication
• Ability to engage in career-long learning
• Ability to use supervision and consultation

2.   Competency:   Apply social work ethical principles to guide professional practice. This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to recognize and manage personal values in a way that allows professional values to guide practice.
• Ability to make ethical decisions by applying standards of NASW
• Ability to tolerate ambiguity in resolving ethical conflicts.
• Ability to apply strategies of ethical reasoning to arrive at principled decisions.

3.   Competency:   Apply critical thinking to inform and communicate professional judgments. This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to distinguish, appraise, and integrate multiple sources of knowledge, including research-based knowledge, and practice wisdom.
• Ability to analyze models of assessment, prevention, intervention, and evaluation
• Ability to demonstrate effective oral and written communication

4.   Competency:  Engage diversity and difference in practice. This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to recognize the extent to which a culture’s structures and values may oppress, marginalize, alienate or create or enhance privilege and power
• Ability to gain sufficient self-awareness to eliminate the influence of personal biases and values in working with diverse groups
• Ability to recognize and communicate their understanding of the importance of difference in shaping life experiences
• Ability to view themselves as learners and engage with those with whom they work as informants.

5.   Competency:  Advance human rights and economic justice. This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to understand the forms and mechanisms of oppression and discrimination
• Ability to advocate for human rights and social and economic justice.
• Ability to engage in practices that advance social and economic justice.

6.   Competency: Engage in research-informed practice and practice-informed research. This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to use practice experience to inform scientific inquiry.
• Ability to use research evidence to inform practice.

7.   Competency:  Apply knowledge of human behavior and the social environment. This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors :

• Ability to utilize conceptual frameworks to guide the processes of assessment, intervention, and evaluation.
• Ability to critique and apply knowledge to understand person and environment.

8.   Competency:  Engage in policy practice to advance social and economic well-being and to deliver effective social services.  This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to analyze, formulate, and advocate for policies that advance social well-being
• Ability to collaborate with colleagues and clients for effective policy action.

9.   Competency: Respond to contexts that shape practice. This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to continuously discover, appraise, and attend to changing locales, populations, scientific and technological developments and emerging social trends to provide relevant services
• Ability to provide leadership in promoting sustainable changes in service delivery and practice to improve the quality of social services

10.   Competency: Engage, assess, intervene, and evaluate with individuals, families, groups, organizations and communities. 

A.  Engagement:This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to prepare for action with clients
• Ability to use empathy and other interpersonal skills
• Ability to develop a mutually agreed-on focus of work and desired outcomes. 

B.  Assessment:This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to collect, organize, and interpret client data in regard to practice.
• Ability to assess client strengths and limitations
• Ability to develop mutually agreed-on intervention goals and objectives
• Ability to select appropriate intervention strategies

C.  Intervention:This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to initiate actions to achieve organizational goals.
• Ability to implement prevention interventions that enhance client capacities.
• Ability to help clients resolve problems
• Ability to negotiate, mediate and advocate for clients
• Ability to facilitate transitions/endings.

D. Evaluation:This includes mastery of the following practice behaviors:

• Ability to critically analyze, monitor and evaluate interventions.

Mastery of these competencies and attendant practice behaviors is achieved through course readings, discussion, activities and assignments as well as through field internship experiences over the course of the program.  Competence is assessed annually.