Advanced Evidence-Informed Interpersonal Practice with Families

SW604, Section 801

This advanced practice course builds on content from the previous foundational course(s) and focuses on family functioning within diverse client populations. The focus of this course is on the development and utilization of family-focused skills and interventions with diverse families in the context of a variety of practice settings such as healthcare, mental health, and other community-based settings.

To inform practice interventions, this course will be grounded in the integration of various current family theories (i.e. attachment theory, general systems theory, communication theory, social construction theory and developmental theory, etc) as well as an overarching neurological perspective. Broad definitions of "family" will be used, including extended families, unmarried couples, single parent families, couples across gender identity and sexual orientation spectrums, adult siblings, "fictive kin," and other inclusive definitions. The development of clinical skills for engaging, assessing, and intervening with families will be the primary focus of this course.

Focused attention on primary models of family theory and practice will inform intervention techniques and skills taught in the course (i.e. Bowen Family Systems Theory, Satir Transformational Systemic Therapy and addition approach(s) informed by identified theories). This course will address stages of the helping process with families (i.e. engagement, assessment, planning, evaluation, intervention, and termination). During these stages, client-worker differences will be taken into account including a range of diversity dimensions such as ability, age, class, color, culture, ethnicity, family structure, immigration status, gender (including gender identity and gender expression), marital status, national origin, race, religion or spirituality and sexual orientation. Various theoretical approaches will be presented in order to help students understand family structure, communication patterns, and behavioral and coping repertoires. The family will also be studied as part of larger social systems, as having its own life cycles, and as influencing multiple generations.