Mental Health

Foundation Year Practice Framework

At the foundation level, (the first year in the Roberts two year program) the curricular emphasis is upon providing basic social work values, knowledge, and skills enabling the student to work with client systems of various sizes at a beginning professional level. These basics are commonly referred to as "generalist practice."
Brown (1982) describes generalist practice in this way:
Generalist social work practice consists of assisting individuals, families, small groups, and larger social systems to work on change which promotes the best possible relationship between people and their environment. In this process, all social work methods - traditional and innovative - are utilized, singly or in combination, to meet reality needs and to alleviate stresses in ways that enhance or strengthen the inherent capacities of client systems. Generalist practice is addressed to the solution and/or prevention of problems at all levels of intervention: intrapersonal, familial, interpersonal, organizational, community, institutional, and societal (p. 123).

Generalist values, knowledge and skills at Roberts build on an undergraduate liberal arts base with requisite knowledge about basic human systems, including human biological systems, psychological systems, sociological systems, and the humanities. During the foundation year, students are presented with a graduate level exposure to the common body of social work knowledge, values, and skills, with special attention given to values and ethics, diversity, economic and social justice issues, and at-risk populations including low-income populations. The Spiritually Enriched Ecological Systems, described previously in some detail, provides the framework which allows for coherent analysis and interpretation of human behavior.
Social work practice during the foundation year assesses client transactions within the unique array of social dynamics and social systems as framed by the Strengths Oriented Life Model. Intervention planning is based on the needs of the particular client system being served and mutually identified with the client system. Practice goals are built around the strengths of client systems as central to the practice effort. Through use of dialogue and collaboration with client systems, professional use of self is instilled whereby students use a variety of methods.

Mental Health Concentration Practice Framework

The purpose of the Mental Health Concentration is to prepare students for advanced direct agency-based social work practice in health settings.

Relationship to Generalist Practice
As with Child and Family Concentration, the advanced practice is built on generalist practice. The Mental Health Concentration does not abandon generalist knowledge, values, and skills but explores in greater depth social work knowledge and skills pertaining to persons needing physical and mental health services. The Physical and Mental Health Concentration remains committed to both the Spiritually Enriched Ecological Systems perspective and the Strengths Oriented Life Model Practice framework. As advanced practitioners engage in social work with a more particular focus, their practice will still need to be analyzed using a systems perspective; and generalist skills in working with systems of various sizes will still be useful. Even though the concentration is focused on direct practice and is oriented more to the micro and mezzo levels, it is imperative that behavior be understood comprehensively.

Advanced Practice Framework
The current state of health care is best characterized by the term uncertainty. Due to the politico-economic environment and the emergence of managed care as a primary force in the health care industry, the narrowly conceputalized social work health care specializations of the past (e.g. medical social work and mental health) are becoming obsolete. The Mental Health Concentration at Roberts is organized to address the health continuum. Such an approach, requires broad theoretical frameworks and an array of intervention skills that allow for both specific knowledge about health care settings and flexibility in when working in the health care field.

Mental Health Concentration provides advanced practice knowledge and skills using the Interlocking Theories approach to social work practice (Turner, 1986). The central idea in the Interlocking Theories approach to practice is that one needs to know a variety of practice theories, models, and intervention strategies to work effectively in a complex and culturally diverse world. A wide knowledge about practice theories and models, each of which provides a different way of viewing and understanding various aspects of the person-in-environment continuum, will guide practitioners in the process of making differential interventions based upon factors such as the unique goals of the client, bio-psycho-social-spiritual factors, the value systems of both client and practitioner, the ethical context, cultural considerations, socio-economic factors, time frames, economic considerations, the strengths of the client, and the empirical backing for the intervention.

Basic to the Mental Health Concentration is a multidimensional assessment strategy which places the practice perspective firmly in the social work tradition. The multidimensional assessment approach to practice builds upon the person/environment social work perspective by developing assessment strategies which consider the biological, cognitive, psychological, spiritual, social, and cultural variables that influence human behavior and functioning as well as economic, political, and religious forces at work.

Particular emphasis is given in the Mental Health Concentration to the time-limited or short-term therapy approaches to social work practice. Skills in crisis intervention, as well as bereavement services, have particular utility in applied medical social work contexts, as many of the settings are suited to short-term types of interventions. Skills in psycho-social assessment and intervention planning have application in all health care settings. Some course content focuses on the ability to function in a multi-disciplinary team, and attention is given to skills in developing and arranging community support systems for clients. In light of the rapidly shifting practice environments in which graduates will function, including the impact of managed care systems, attention is given to developing an understanding of, and strategies for, helping both clients and practitioners cope with the transitions.
While much of the concentration course content has applicability to the continuum of health care, health care issues unique to particular settings are explored as well. Specific attention is given to Managed Care and to Hospital settings.
While breadth is critical to effective practice in the Mental Health Concentration, it is vital for advanced social work practitioners to integrate the multiplicity of methods and techniques into a unified whole. Thus, the practice curriculum both exposes students to a wide range of theoretical models and helps them synthesize the various models. The goal of the Interlocking theories approach to practice is to help students develop a unified practice model that maximizes the strengths of their personalities and experiences, and to prepare them for the practice settings they anticipate working in.

Several important threads are woven throughout the advanced practice curriculum. They include the centrality of values and ethics in guiding practice; the ability to incorporate diversity knowledge in the assessment and intervention of persons in physical and mental health settings, including spirituality and religion; the ability to include knowledge about discrimination and oppression on behavior, particularly related to at-risk populations; and the ability to work toward change, including changing policy.

References

Brown, E. (1982). Rationale for a generalist approach to social work practice. In O. K. D.S. Sanders, & J. Fisher (Ed.), Fundamentals of social work practice (pp. 119-130). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Turner, F. (1974). Social work treatment: Interlocking theoretical approaches. New York: Free Press.