Continuing Education Course Catalog

Note: This course is available for free to U-M SSW alumni as part of our Alumni Webinar Series, which features invited alumni speakers. Please know that non-alumni participants are welcome to register as well!

This continuing education course is designed for social workers and mental health professionals seeking to enhance their competence in working with Veterans transitioning from military to civilian life. Participants will explore the foundational aspects of military culture, common psychosocial challenges faced during reintegration, and the clinical implications of various discharge statuses. The course will examine the impact of trauma, chronic pain, loss of identity, and disrupted family dynamics on former service members.

Participants will also engage in an interactive, case-based activity to identify appropriate interventions and gain practical strategies for building trust and rapport with veterans from diverse backgrounds. Emphasis will be placed on the social worker’s role in supporting veterans across settings, including psychotherapy, housing support, substance use treatment, and social reintegration. The training will prepare professionals to respond with cultural humility and effectiveness when supporting those who have served.

The African American experience comes with misunderstandings that often make their way into the play therapy space with children. The mental health needs of African American families are sometimes even overlooked for various reasons. In this workshop, we will dive into the perception of play therapy within the African American community, and how clinicians can best support the unique mental health needs of African American children and families within the play therapy process. Participants will engage in didactic and experiential learning to support cultural humility through mind and body awareness.

This course explores models of Animal Assisted Social Work Interventions and the role of each member of the clinical or educational team including the practitioner, animal partner(s), client(s) or participant(s), and animal handler and/or volunteers. The reflexive skills necessary to effectively engage both human and animal partners are explored through the application of dialogic cross-cultural social work theory and methodology. The well-being of animal partners, the ethics of engaging animals to heal humans, and animal welfare are important foci of this course. Basic animal ethology, communication, signals of contentment, tolerance and stress, and positive training techniques, especially with dogs and horses will be centered.

This course pulls together aspects of the previous courses to focus on practical applications of Animal Assisted Interventions. It explores the wide range of programs involving animal partners across fields of human services including health care, education and social work activities with diverse human populations such as people with disabilities and/or trauma, veterans, and urban youth. Animal Assisted Therapy approaches integrating evidence-based and best-practice methods with animal partners are explained through specific case examples with diverse youth including refugee, LGBTQ, and sexual abuse survivors using individual, family and group modalities. Participants learn how to create culturally sensitive treatment or lesson plans that include animal partners and effectively verbalize the clinical meaning of animal/human interactions to further clients’ therapeutic goals. This course shares examples of how to track and evaluate progress, document sessions, and evaluate effectiveness. It also explores the need for further research in the field.