The Traumatic Impact of Child Abuse and Neglect and How Social Workers Can Intervene

This course will cover the traumatic impact the child welfare system has on children, youth and families. The goal of the course is to provide an understanding of how state governments think about the adequacy/appropriateness of parenting, the safety of children, when and how child protection agencies get involved with families and what the evidence says about such involvement. The content will focus on the early phases of intervention, including barriers to engagement that may result from client-worker differences, involuntary participation on the part of the child, youth, or family, and factors external to the client-worker relationship, such as policy or institutional decisions that may influence or shape intervention. Since work with children and youth almost always requires multiple intervention modalities, attention will be given to creating effective intervention plans through the integration of different modalities. Those intervention methods that have been empirically demonstrated to be effective will be given particular emphasis. Intervention strategies taught in this course rely significantly on the social worker as a critical component of the change process, thus attention will be paid to the understanding of self as an instrument in the change process.