Competency 8: Intervene with Individuals, Families, Groups,
Organizations, and Communities
Advanced generalist practitioners approach intervention from a strengths based perspective focusing on resiliency and protective factors as an ongoing component of the dynamic interactive process of social work practice with, and on behalf of, diverse individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. Advanced generalist practitioners prioritize cultural values, traditions, and unique resources of rural settings by recognizing and validating the client’s contextual world view. Advanced generalist practitioners adapt evidence-informed interventions to achieve the goals of clients and constituencies, including individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. Advanced generalist practitioners critically evaluate and adapt theories of human behavior and the social environment and apply this knowledge to effectively intervene with rural clients and constituencies. Advanced generalist practitioners differentiate methods of identifying, analyzing and implementing evidence-informed interventions to achieve clients and constituency goals. Advanced generalist practitioners value the importance of inter-professional teamwork and communication in interventions, recognizing that beneficial outcomes may require interdisciplinary, inter-professional, and inter-organizational collaboration. Advanced generalist practitioners:
- Engage with clients and constituencies to critically choose and implement culturally responsive, evidence informed interventions to achieve rural client and constituency goals;
- Apply knowledge of human behavior and the social environment, person-in-environment, and other culturally responsive and interprofessional conceptual frameworks in interventions with rural clients and constituencies;
- Use inter-professional collaboration as appropriate to achieve beneficial practice outcomes in rural settings;
- Provide leadership in program development, administration, and evaluation; clinical and organizational supervision; research development and utilization; and policy creation, reform and implementation; and
- Facilitate effective transitions and endings that advance mutually developed goals.
Competency #8 In Practice
As a social worker, I am passionate about using generalist social work skills to intervene in situations that face people and communities. My current practice involves using evidence-based cognitive behavioral interventions with families (mezzo) and youths (micro) in comprehensive child and family treatment services. In these services, I also intervene with systems and stakeholders such as school systems, courts, and the Department of Child Services on behalf of my client and their families (macro). I will continue to use evidence-based interventions and clients’ experiences to inform and develop culturally responsive best practices wherever I work.
8.1 Implement clinical evidence-based interventions with individuals, families, and/or groups
Class Evidence: In this CBT Video Demonstration, I demonstrate an ability to use evidence-based interventions such as basic cognitive behavioral therapy in an individual session with a client. This video demonstration is a good example of this intervention skill because it demonstrates all the different aspects of implementing this psychoeducational, from the initial exchange of names, review of confidentiality, explaining of the therapeutic relationship, soliciting of the client’s concern, connection to CBT principles and explaining the concepts using an example from the client.
Field Evidence: This session note documents a breakthrough session in many weeks of work I was doing with the family. This family was going through their third time through the intercept program with Youth Villages, which is very unusual because we usually don’t take kids for a second time, much less for a third. This child’s had multiple diagnoses and a problem history of referral behaviors. They had been going to a lot of different services, including in-school psychology and social work services, occupational therapy for autism, and individual therapy for, among other things, emotional regulation. This session note documents the importance of the in-home family services I did during my internship with Your Villages. This kind of service is crucial because instead of just focusing on the Youth, we can talk to all of the different players in the Youth’s lives. For this Youth, it involved the occupational therapist, individual family therapist, school psychologist, school social worker, father, and mother. This has accumulated many insights from all the adults involved in the Youth’s life. This session was the first one that Mom started finally talking about her depression and how her suicidal ideation started triggering the youth suicidal ideation, which had been the primary problem that was the focus of services at the moment that the case transitioned to me in the session I demonstrated an implemented evidence-based practice through not only working individually with the Youth but also by involving her mom in our sessions was able to get to the root of the problem and this Youth’s life. By addressing mom’s depression, we were able to make more progress than addressing the youth issues by herself. In the session note, I not only provide a summary of the session but also document the Youth and mother’s mood, mental alertness, and orientation and also therapeutic assignments at the end of the session, which from this session was for Mom to find her therapist to be able to work through her issues to be able to resolve her own depression enough to be able to set effective expectations for the Youth. This session note demonstrates my ability to implement the clinical evidence-based intervention of the Intercept program with this family by documenting the watershed moment in this case where a significant driver of the youth’s behavior was revealed.
8.2 Integrate macro level evidence-based strategies with organizations and/or communities
Class Evidence: The logic model, starting on page 95 of our program proposal for our advanced administrative practice program development class, summarizes the macro-level interventions we proposed through this program. The logic model summarizes the inputs, outputs, and outcomes that we proposed our program would need and result in. We conducted an extensive literature review to determine potential needs and potential resources that would be best appropriate for this demographic in our community, and we designed a needs assessment based on the research we conducted and then proposed a program complete with staff and resources needed for how we would interact with stakeholders. By creating such a comprehensive program, this logic model briefly summarizes the proposed macro-level strategy that this program facilitates and demonstrates competency in integrating macro-level evidence-based strategies.
Field Evidence: In this presentation, I gave them access to the trauma-informed attitudes assessment that I talked about for 7.2, and then I gave them a summary of trauma-informed care principles. I did this by first reviewing problematic behaviors, especially in working with children, and what often causes these behaviors, going over traumatic stress, Adverse Childhood experiences, and simple explanations of how trauma impacts the brain. In this presentation, I demonstrated evidence-based interventions by pulling from a variety of evidence-based psychological and educational sources to give student missionaries on Southern Adventist University’s campus the best of the variety of approaches to inform their approach to emotional regulation and its necessity in helping children that have experienced trauma to resolve problem behaviors.