SW 905 Advanced Group Work Practice
This certificate program is designed for professionals with a Masters degree in social work, counseling, human services, or psychology and are facilitating groups in diverse settings such as community agencies, hospitals, residential settings, school-based settings, and with children, youth and families. As more agencies shift from individual to group focused treatment and increase their group services in order to better meet the needs of their clients, or out of fiscal necessity, practitioners are faced with the challenge of offering an expanded menu of groups, including more specialized groups. This certificate program will strengthen the skills that clinicians are already utilizing, while providing a more varied and sophisticated conceptual framework and tools with which to practice. Curriculum Overview and Competencies: The course will be taught by a team of experienced group workers, each with a distinct area of expertise and with knowledge of best practices and cutting edge techniques. Course content will be delivered in five learning modules. Participants will leave the course with increased skills in the following areas: 1. Group work with clients who live with co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorders. 2. Cognitive behavioral and dialectical behavioral approaches to group work across settings and client populations. 3. Mindfulness and stress-based reduction with children, adolescents and adults who have anxiety disorders. 4. Conflict related to diversity in groups, and the importance of multi-culturally competent practice. 5. Group work supervision and consultation: How to create a meaningful, safe and sustainable learning community through supervision and/or consultation. Participants will develop and hone the following competencies: . Group work with at-risk and diverse client populations. . Facilitation of open-ended group, short-term and time sensitive groups with particular attention paid to group purpose, planning, group composition, member recruitment strategies, and contracting. . Use of formal and innovative curricula, as well as activities and expressive modalities as vehicles for enhancing self-expression and communications skills. . Review of key concepts and best practices for use in CBT and DBT groups. . Definition and philosophical underpinnings of mindfulness-based approaches and the evolution of of these techniques as a distinct practice approach. . Review of critical skills and best practices for use of mindfulness-based approaches across the lifespan. . Participants will learn how to conceptualize conflict as a normative and predictable dynamic, and to encourage careful resolution of conflict in ways that support group members' collective strengths, abilities, and wisdom. . Conflict rooted in diversity will be defined, and the worker's role and use of self in surfacing and addressing conflict rooted in diversity will be explored. . The Art of Co-facilitation: nurturing and addressing the challenges of partnership. . Group work supervision as a necessary vehicle for ensuring quality of care, managing countertransference, accountability to clients and agency, advancing agency mission and objectives, and combating compassion fatigue. Experiential Learning: Objectives and Competencies Learning through action and reflection is the cornerstone of this clinical certificate program. Participants will have ample opportunities to put into practice concepts and skills. This will occur through role plays and during the in-class experiential component of the course.